How can I restore a single dotnet tool according to the local tool manifest?

[cbersch]

We have several dotnet tools defined in the local tool manifest of our repository.
Some of those tools are needed only for specific tasks or pipelines, but I found no way to restore only a single tool to the version defined in the manifest (currently using 9.0.301):

dotnet tool install MyTool.Cli

always does an update, I have no way to skip that.

dotnet tool restore

restores all tools defined in the manifest.

It would be very helpful, if either dotnet tool install had an option to skip updates, or dotnet tool restore had an option to restore only a single tool by its name.

[baronfel]

Another solution would be to use the dnx command from the 10.0.100-preview.6 SDK.

dnx will install and run the version of the individual package you ask it to, but it'll use the version from your config manifest by default if you have one.

[cbersch]

Another solution would be to use the dnx command from the 10.0.100-preview.6 SDK.

dnx will install and run the version of the individual package you ask it to, but it'll use the version from your config manifest by default if you have one.

That's a nice option once we use .NET 10.

[Saancreed]

dnx doesn't appear to resolve this:

$ dotnet --version
10.0.100

$ dotnet tool exec dotnet-ef --yes -- --help
Run "dotnet tool restore" to make the "dotnet-ef" command available.

I expected tool exec / dnx to just run the desired tool and perform restore on its own as needed, without asking me to manually restore anything first, yet it asks to restore all the tools. Wasn't that like half the point of dnx? Right now in cases where tool versions are encoded in tool manifests, this seems to have no benefits over tool run.

[baronfel]

@Saancreed I expected that as well - @marcpopMSFT we should schedule making that work at least.

[marcpopMSFT]

@dsplaisted want dig into this or see if copilot comes up with anything?