Can't get .NET Standard 2.0 installed

Question

I'm trying to create a .NET Standard 2.0 project, however on the project properties page it only has options up to .NET Standard 1.6. I went to Visual Studio > Tools > Extensions and Updates > Updates > Product Updates and upgraded Visual Studio 2017 to the latest version (15.5.4.)

I also downloaded / installed the .Net Core 2.0 SDKs from both of these urls:

https://github.com/dotnet/core/blob/master/release-notes/download-archives/2.0.0-download.md

https://www.microsoft.com/net/learn/get-started/windows?utm_expid=.-Fmi9Q05Ry2oXQgdtPElHw.0&utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.talkingdotnet.com%2Fwhats-new-in-net-standard-2%2F#windowscmd

For good measure I even rebooted, yet still no .NET Standard 2.0 option. What gives?

C:\WINDOWS\system32>dotnet --info .NET Command Line Tools (2.1.4)

Product Information: Version: 2.1.4 Commit SHA-1 hash: 5e8add2190

Runtime Environment: OS Name: Windows OS Version: 10.0.16299 OS Platform: Windows RID: win10-x64 Base Path: C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\2.1.4\

Microsoft .NET Core Shared Framework Host

Version : 2.0.5 Build : 17373eb129b3b05aa18ece963f8795d65ef8ea54

Answer 1

It turns out that someone had put a global.json file at the root of our repo that was hard-coding the SDK to a 1.x preview version. Once I updated that to 2.1.4, I started getting the .NET Standard 2.0 project option!