Docker + Visual Studio – resolving error – Publish has encountered an error. Docker support must be enabled in the project

Background / Scenario :

1. We have our docker team developing containerised applications (docker images)
2. Our docker team needs to be push those respective docker images to our private registry (I am covering Docker Registry concepts in detail in upcoming articles)
3. So got an opportunity to demonstrate how to push our application / docker image to our private registry from Visual Studio
4. While publishing my application to our private registry from Visual Studio got below error

Error / Issue :

Publish has encountered an error.
Docker support must be enabled in the project. See https://aka.ms/vs-add-docker for information on adding Docker support to the project.

Details :

• I am using my Visual Studio 22 preview – community edition
• I have created simple one .NET Core console application to demonstrate as

• We want to publish this application to our private docker container registry
• So in “Solution Explorer” right click on project and “Publish” as

• On click on of “Publish” we will get an “Publish” dialog and various options to publish as

• Select the target – “Docker Container Registry” and click on “Next” button on the bottom of “Publish” dialog
• Then we need to select the – “Specific target” as shown in below fig

• Here we will select an option – “Other Docker Container Registry” option
• Click on “Next” button, we will have an option for our private registry URL and image tag
• Please specify the URL of registry and image tag
• Once we specified respective details, please click on “Publish” button as

Solution :

• By default Docker support is not added to Visual Studio project
• We need to explicitly add the docker support to our Visual Studio project

Steps to add Docker support the Visual Studio project :

• In Visual Studio , Solution Explorer, right click on project and click on “Add” as

• From “Add” option select option – “Docker Support” as

• As we click on “Docker Support…” option we will get an “Docker File Options” to select the our OS as

• As we select our OS, “DockerFile” is added to our project as (I’ll explain in detail about DockerFile in separate article)

• Now please try to publish and project will published to our private contained registry successfully 🙂

We have very good articles for Docker and Kubernetes please have a look once – https://knowledge-junction.in/category/containerization/

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HAVE a GREAT TIME AHEAD 🙂