How may I choose which dotnet version, of multiple installed, a command is executed with?

I need to run these 2 commands with dotnet:

dotnet new install Clean.Architecture.Solution.Template
dotnet new ca-sln

The first is for installing a template.

The second is for creating a project from that template.

I have multiple versions of dotnet installed, and it seems like dotnet 7 (the latest I have installed) is used by default.

How do I make sure the command executes with dotnet 6?

Solution

This is managed by global.json

You can use dotnet new global.json to create a suitable file for the current framework, and then edit it to use any of the frameworks listed in dotnet --info. For example, on my machine dotnet --info says (among other things):

.NET SDKs installed:
  6.0.411 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]
  7.0.305 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]
  7.0.400 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]
  8.0.100-rc.1.23455.8 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]

so I could use as my global.json:

{
  "sdk": {
    "version": "6.0.411"
  }
}

and now dotnet 6 will be used.

To see this:

(before, with no global.json)

> dotnet --version
8.0.100-rc.1.23455.8

(after, with a global.json specifying dotnet 6)

> dotnet --version
6.0.411

The system searches upwards for global.json, so it can be in the current folder or anywhere higher, and it will be applied.

Learn more here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/global-json - including things like roll-forward policies (so you don't need an exact framework match)