Setting Up .NET Core Development Environment

This guide is for setting up a .NET Core development environment on Windows. The installed software will take up about 10-13GB disk space (depending on which database management tool you choose). Please make sure you have enough disk space, and a fast and reliable internet connection during installation.

Visual Studio

Download Visual Studio 2019 Community from Microsoft. Run the installer, and on the Workloads tab, select the following

• ASP.NET and web development
• .NET desktop development
• .NET Core cross-platform development

And on the Individual Components tab, add the following:

• Git for Windows (if you don't have Git)
• GitHub extension for Visual Studio

Click the Install button at the lower right corner to start installation. After installation, Visual Studio will automatically start and ask you to sign in your Microsoft account. If you don't have a Microsoft account, please create one -- it's free and it's required to use Visual Studio Community Edition. Signing into your Microsoft account also has benefits like synchronizing your settings across different computers.

.NET Core SDK

Download and install the latest .NET Core SDK.

Database Management Tool

Download and install either Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) or Azure Data Studio (ADS).

SSMS have more features than ADS, but SSMS is Windows only and has pretty high system requirements (3GB disk space and minimum 2GB memory). ADS works on Windows, macOS, and Linux.