Configure .NET projects

The build system works with a set of assumptions. It will try to find your solution file in the src folder of your repository. Then it will build, test and pack every project that it's included in the solution. To make this work, we need to configure some files.

Note

There are a few extra steps that can help you to maintain a large .NET project. You can find more information in setup .NET environment.

Build settings for .NET projects

First, if you are not using the conventions from the recipe you may want to adjust the build context. For instance, to set the location of the solution file. You can do this from the Setup method of the BuildLifetime class we just created. You can get the list of options in build context.

Configure test code coverage

You can get a report on code coverage from your unit tests. Add a package reference to coverlet.collector in your test libraries. Then create a file src/Tests.runsettings to configure what projects to include / exclude.

Packing .NET libraries

The build system will run dotnet pack over your solution file. This will try to pack every library. The benefit is that it will respect the Platform setting from your solution file.

In order to work, open/create a top-level src/Directory.Build.props and set inside a PropertyGroup: IsPackable to false. Then for each public library or tool that you are going to create a NuGet package, set IsPackabe to true.

Packing .NET apps

Unfortunately the previous packing trick for libraries doesn't work for applications. The .NET tooling requires to call dotnet publish for each runtime identifier and target framework to use.

The build system will call dotnet publish with a specific configuration on each configured projects. You will need to define the projects to publish inside the Setup method of the BuildLifetime class of your build system:

context.DotNetContext.ApplicationProjects.Add(
    new ProjectPublicationInfo(
        "./src/MyConsole", // path to folder or .csproj
        new[] { "win-x64", "linux-x64", "osx-x64" }, // runtime identifiers
        "net8.0")); // target framework

.NET ready

And voilà! 🎉 If you run this project it should be able to build and release your .NET project.

Build and run tests (with code coverage!):

# It runs the "Default" target
dotnet run --project build/orchestrator

Bundle:

dotnet run --project build/orchestrator -- --target=Bundle