[Alexandre Zollinger Chohfi (azchohfi)]

Three comment-only corrections to the dotnet new template smoke test. No behaviour change to what the script builds or runs.

1. .DESCRIPTION described coverage the script doesn't have

It claimed app templates "are optionally launched via dotnet run using the recommended WinAppSDK self-contained properties." Neither half is true:

• Launch-AppExecutables resolves the built .exe under bin/ and Start-Processes it directly. dotnet run is never invoked.
• Builds pass -p:WindowsPackageType=None, which is the opposite of the self-contained packaged shape.

2. The Reactor comment was false from the commit that wrote it

It called those templates "unpackaged" and said "their .csproj already sets it" (WindowsPackageType). Both wrong — and not drift:

2fd73557 (#6620) added the comment and the templates in the same commit, and at that commit all four ProjectTemplate.csproj files already declared EnableMsixTooling=true with no WindowsPackageType element. It contradicted the templates it shipped with. templates.props also gives each one RenameManifestFrom=Package-managed.appxmanifest.

3. <#+ suppressed comment-based help entirely

The help block opened with <#+ instead of <#. That's a valid block comment to the parser, so the script always ran fine — but Get-Help didn't recognise it as comment-based help and returned the auto-generated syntax line with no DESCRIPTION or PARAMETER text.

Verified by copying the file to a scratch directory and changing only that token:

Opener	Get-Help output
<#+ (before)	no description, no parameter help
<# (after)	full help, including every .PARAMETER

This is why the inaccurate .DESCRIPTION went unnoticed: correcting the text alone would still have left it invisible to anyone inspecting the script the normal way. Fixing the opener also surfaces the existing -SkipAppLaunch, -Platforms, -RunTimeoutSeconds etc. help for the first time.

Why this matters beyond tidiness

All nine Kind='App' templates ship a manifest and are built with packaging disabled, so Package.appxmanifest processing, MSIX tooling and identity activation are unexercised. Anyone auditing that coverage reads .DESCRIPTION, sees "launched via dotnet run", and stops. The comments were hiding the gap from the repo that owns it.

No rationale for -p:WindowsPackageType=None is asserted here, in either direction — none is recorded. It arrived with the harness in 9b5d40a61 (#6407), the commit that added the file, so it was present in the first version rather than introduced later as a deliberate constraint. Rather than invent a plausible justification, this PR just makes the description match observable behaviour.

Validation

• Script parses with 0 errors ([Parser]::ParseFile).
• Get-Help renders the corrected description and all parameter help.

Note on CI coverage for this PR

This change is under dev/Templates/**, which matches the +dev/Templates/** PR trigger filter added in #6782, so WindowsAppSDK-Templates-PR — the pipeline that actually runs this script via WindowsAppSDK-DotnetNewTemplates-Test-Stage.yml — would be expected to run.

At time of writing it has not appeared on this PR. Roughly 6 minutes after push, only WinAppSDK-TouchDownBuild and license/cla are reporting. For comparison, #6786 (also strictly under dev/Templates/**) ran 55 checks including "Smoke-test dotnet new templates / Scaffold and build dotnet new templates".

This may simply be queue latency, but flagging it rather than asserting a run that hasn't happened. Worth confirming the templates smoke test actually executes before merging, since this PR edits the script that pipeline runs. (WinAppSDK-TouchDownBuild fails identically on unrelated PR #6804, so that failure is pre-existing and not from this change.)

---

• Comment-only; no code paths changed
• Claims verified against the commits that introduced them
• No invented rationale for the packaging flag
• Templates smoke-test pipeline confirmed to run

[azure-pipelines]

Azure Pipelines:
There may be pipelines that require an authorized user to comment /azp run to run.

[Alexandre Zollinger Chohfi (azchohfi)]

/azp run

[azure-pipelines]

Azure Pipelines:
Successfully started running 2 pipeline(s).
1 pipeline(s) were filtered out due to trigger conditions.

[Alexandre Zollinger Chohfi (azchohfi)]

/azp run

[azure-pipelines]

Azure Pipelines:
Successfully started running 2 pipeline(s).

[Alexandre Zollinger Chohfi (azchohfi)]

Superseded by a fresh PR with identical content on branch azchohfi-fix-template-harness-help-comments, opened to get a clean CI run. Closing this one.

The change itself is unchanged (same blob, 6f1f0cc9): the three comment/help corrections to dev/Templates/Dotnet/Test-DotnetNewTemplates.ps1.

For the record, CI on this PR did eventually run in full (57 checks), and the stage that actually executes the edited script — "Smoke-test dotnet new templates / Scaffold and build dotnet new templates" — passed. The only failure was "Validate VSIX templates build / Restore + build WindowsAppSDK.Extension.sln", which fails identically on unrelated PRs #6843, #6835 and #6824, so it is a pre-existing repo-wide failure rather than anything introduced here.

[Alexandre Zollinger Chohfi (azchohfi)]

Superseded by #6846.