dotnet-tool-management

Consumer-side management of .NET CLI tools: installing global and local tools, creating and maintaining .config/dotnet-tools.json manifests, version pinning for team reproducibility, dotnet tool restore in CI pipelines, updating and uninstalling tools, and troubleshooting common tool issues.

Version assumptions: .NET 8.0+ baseline. Local tools and tool manifests available since .NET Core 3.0. RID-specific tool packaging available since .NET 10.

Out of scope: Tool authoring and packaging (PackAsTool, NuGet packaging, ToolCommandName) -- see [skill:dotnet-cli-packaging]. Distribution strategy (AOT vs framework-dependent vs dotnet tool decision) -- see [skill:dotnet-cli-distribution]. Release CI/CD pipeline -- see [skill:dotnet-cli-release-pipeline].

Cross-references: [skill:dotnet-cli-packaging] for tool authoring and NuGet packaging, [skill:dotnet-cli-distribution] for distribution strategy and RID matrix, [skill:dotnet-cli-release-pipeline] for automated release workflows, [skill:dotnet-project-analysis] for detecting existing tool manifests.

Global Tool Installation

Global tools are installed per-user and available from any directory. The tool binaries are added to a directory on the user's PATH.

# Install a global tool
dotnet tool install -g <package-id>