Why can't I open my Azure Bot Service in Visual Studio? - azure

Question

Okay, so this problem is kinda complicated, but I'll try to make it as simple as possible.
So I have this Bot Service created in Microsoft's Azure platform. It's been hooked up to BitBucket with the continuous integration option. Then, I tried following the instructions here in order to be able to debug the bot locally with Visual Studio. I downloaded and installed all the requisite tools and pulled the BitBucket project into a local repository. However, when I tried running 'dotnet restore' in the messages folder, I received this error message:
C:\...\messages\project.json(1,1): error MSB4025: The project file could not be loaded. Data at the root level is invalid. Line 1, position 1.
This project.json file was automatically built by Azure; why should it be invalid? The contents look like this:
{
"frameworks": {
"net46":{
"dependencies": {
"Microsoft.Bot.Builder.Azure": "3.1"
}
}
}
}
I've also tried the same thing with Visual Studio 2017, this time including the messages.csproj file in the messages folder. And this time, dotnet restore said I needed to specify a project/solution file because there multiple in the folder. I dunno if that's necessarily a problem, but it's not mentioned at all in the official guide, so it's at least a bit suspicious. Anyway, specifying project.json leads to the same error, while specifying messages.csproj seems to work all right and outputs this:
NuGet Config files used:
C:\Users\Connor.Johnson\AppData\Roaming\NuGet\NuGet.Config
C:\Program Files (x86)\NuGet\Config\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Offline.config
Feeds used:
https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\NuGetPackages\
That being the case, I run debughost.cmd. Previously, I had to manually copy over project.lock.json from the downloadable zip file available on Azure (it's in gitignore) as the debughost thing wouldn't automatically restore that stuff. More recently that doesn't seem to be a problem any more. Anyway, the debughost.cmd stuff works fine.
Naw, the real problem's when I try to open this stuff in Visual Studio. See, when I try to open the bot.sln file, I get this error message:
One or more projects in the solution were not loaded correctly. Please see the Output Window for more details.
Okay, so the Output Window gives me this super useful information:
Some of the properties associated with the solution could not be read.
Uh huh... Well, in terms of what shows up in Visual Studio, only debughost.cmd, commands.json, and readme.md show up. The messages folder is there, but it's empty. There's also an Azure Functions func thing. That's it.
Now I've looked all over for information on this issue, but I'm apparently the only person who's had it. Moreover, I've tried opening the Bot in VS2015, VS2017, from only the source code downloaded from Azure (i.e., without the Git stuff), and from the BitBucket repository. I've also tried using connecting to source control from the Team Explorer in Visual Studio. Nothing's working! I can't find any information on what might be incorrectly configured, and I find it odd that I should have to change anything. I could serrrrrrriously use some help here.