Is it possible to use monogame in VS code?

I wrote this (Windows-only) solution in medium. It's a step-by-step of how to install and run dotnet with MonoGame in the terminal of VSCode.

You need to install:

• .NET SDK 5.0
• .NET Core SDK 3.1
• .NET Runtime 5.0

You can run dotnet in your terminal and see if it's working.

1. Install MonoGame editor:

   dotnet tool install --global dotnet-mgcb-editor
   

   and

   mgcb-editor --register
   

2. Install MonoGame Templates:

   dotnet new --install MonoGame.Templates.CSharp
   

3. Create a new project in the chosen template:

   dotnet new mgdesktopgl -o ProjectName
   

4. Enter in your project with cd ProjectName and add the MonoGame package to it:

   dotnet add package MonoGame.Framework.DesktopGL --version 3.8.0.1641
   

5. And finally:

   dotnet run Program.cs
   

Answer edited as Monogame released official dotnet project templates

I finally got it working.

I realized that all I needed was to create a monogame project (*.csproj) and Compile/Build it without Visual Studio. VS Code is just a feature-rich text editor and I would need other toolset for it.

MSBuild tool is used to Compile/Build monogame project and is available as a CLI. It is available without installing Visual Studio. For C# project building, dotnet core is required. executing the script

dotnet new [Template]

creates a new Project. We need to add a template for monogame here.

As per the latest update by the Monogame Team, you can install the templates by executing

dotnet new --install "MonoGame.Templates.CSharp"

Use the script

dotnet new -h

to check out all the templates available.

Now, to generate the project, use the following

dotnet new mgwindows

On successful execution, this will generate [FolderName].csproj, Game1.cs, Program.cs and other files/folders of monogame project. Please not that this csproj is on .NET Framework (version 4.5 if I'm not wrong....) and therefore it might not work with dotnet run command. (If you're a bit stubborn, you might need to copy the Monogame installed folder(which contains, among many other files, Monogame.target file) in your dotnet installed folder.)

In other words, use msbuild to build and run the project

msbuild

If the program does not contain any compile time errors, the .exe file will be built successfully and you will get to see the the Output file path which you get to execute.

If you're working on Linux or have some other reason not to use MSBuild, you should not generate a mgwindows project. You can rather chose

dotnet new desktopgl

which works on dotnet core (i.e you can use dotnet run command to execute it).