Short answer: No, not really.
The long answer: Yes, but there is a trick, and this requires registry changes.
New Project Dialog built around the idea of first selecting a project template, and then choosing the viewing mechanism supported by this template.
Others managed to add their own things to this window, so I took the hints offered by ASP.NET MVC 3 using xUnit.net Testproject , another third-party extension and played in the registry for some time.
First you need to create a ProjectTemplate for the visual studio from which it can create a clean Spark project. For completeness, you can do this by creating a new Razor project, reconfiguring it for Spark, and then exporting the template using the file menu. Uncheck to automatically register a new export in VS. I decided to keep the installation simple and moved the new template to where the official MVC3 project templates live (for me it was C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft VisualStudio 10.0\Common\IDE\ProjectTemplates\CSharp\Web ). Then run "devenv / setup" from the command line for VS to find and register the newly created template.
Here you need to add custom additions to the new dialog window:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Mvc3\ProjectTemplates] | |- [MyOwnTemplate] |- (REG_SZ)Title="Template title" |- (REG_SZ)Description="Description for the box in the right" |- [C#] |- [Spark] | |- (REG_SZ)Path="CSharp\\Web" | |- (REG_SZ)Template="YourCustomCSharpSparkTemplate.zip" | |- (REG_DWORD)SupportsUnitTests=1 |- [Razor] |- (REG_SZ)Path="CSharp\\Web" |- (REG_SZ)Template="YourCustomCSharpRazorTemplate.zip" |- (REG_DWORD)SupportsUnitTests=0
If you are not using a 64-bit installation, remove the Wow6432Node key from the node open register.
Now, when you restart VS and start the Create New Project Wizard for MVC3, the new registered template should be indicated there. When you select your custom project template, you will see that the ViewEngine drop-down list shows Spark as the current ViewEngine.
New Project Dialog groups templates using the keyword in ProjectTemplates. Since MVC3 does not register its default templates in the registry, we do not know under which key they are grouped and, therefore, cannot add their own ViewEngines to them.