Chapter 3 Command Line Interface

Since the templates have been installed on my machine, dotnet new knows what to do. It inflates the template into a new project and puts it in the directory my command line is currently set in. the -o parameter stands for Output; dotnet new will use this as the name for both the folder and the project it’s creating.

Templates are distributed using NuGet infrastructure and thus are packaged as NuGet packages. The default install location of these templates on Windows is

%USERPROFILE%\.templateengine\dotnetcli\.

An interesting option in dotnet new is the dry-run option. Figure 3-4 shows the output if we try to create a new WPF project with the --dry-run flag.

Figure 3-5.  Dry-run output

Dry-run lists all the actions that would have happened if the command was run without --dry-run. It didn’t actually do anything; the command just lists what would have happened.

Creating new projects through inflating a template is handled by a component called the .NET Core Templating Engine. It’s an open source piece of software, available at https://github.com/dotnet/templating.

Dotnet Restore

The dotnet restore command restores dependencies and tools of a project. It uses the information in the project’s projectfile (*.csproj in case of a C#-based project). This command usually does not need to be executed explicitly; it gets triggered from the following:

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Should you still want to do dotnet restore manually for whatever reason, you can stop it being called from the above commands by using the --no-restore option like so:

Listing 3-3.  Creating a new project without restoring packages dotnet new wpf -o WpfDemo --no-restore

Being able to prevent package restore and call it whenever we need it gives us the flexibility needed to setup a fine-grained build pipeline. More on build and release pipelines further in this chapter.

Listing 3-4 shows the help on dotnet restore.

Listing 3-4.  dotnet restore help

Usage:

dotnet [options] restore [<PROJECT | SOLUTION>...]

Arguments:

<PROJECT | SOLUTION> The project or solution file to operate on. If a file is not specified, the command will search the current directory for one.

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Chapter 3 Command Line Interface

Dotnet restore needs a project to restore; it either finds this implicitly in the folder the command line is currently set in, through a project path can be passed explicitly or through a solution file.

Before we can build an application, we first need to do a dotnet restore. This will generate a project.assets.json file that dotnet build needs. That file contains a complete configuration for dotnet build; it configures project path and name, referenced libraries, target frameworks, and so on. Listing 3-5 shows an example of the project.assets.json.

Listing 3-5.  project.assets.json example

{

"version": 3, "targets": { "net6.0": {}

},

"libraries": {}, "projectFileDependencyGroups": {

"net6.0": []

}, "packageFolders": {

"C:\\Users\\myUser\\.nuget\\packages\\": {},

"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio\\Shared\\ NuGetPackages": {},

"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft\\Xamarin\\NuGet\\": {}, "C:\\Program Files\\dotnet\\sdk\\NuGetFallbackFolder": {}

}, "project": {

"version": "1.0.0", "restore": {

"projectUniqueName": "C:\\Projects\\Apress\\cli\\CliDemo\\CliDemo. csproj",

"projectName": "CliDemo",

"projectPath": "C:\\Projects\\Apress\\cli\\CliDemo\\CliDemo.csproj", "packagesPath": "C:\\Users\\myUser\\.nuget\\packages\\", "outputPath": "C:\\Projects\\Apress\\cli\\CliDemo\\obj\\", "projectStyle": "PackageReference",

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Chapter 3 Command Line Interface

"fallbackFolders": [

"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio\\Shared\\ NuGetPackages",

"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft\\Xamarin\\NuGet\\", "C:\\Program Files\\dotnet\\sdk\\NuGetFallbackFolder"

], "configFilePaths": [

"C:\\Users\\myUser\\AppData\\Roaming\\NuGet\\NuGet.Config", "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\NuGet\\Config\\Microsoft.VisualStudio. FallbackLocation.config",

"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\NuGet\\Config\\Microsoft.VisualStudio. Offline.config",

"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\NuGet\\Config\\Xamarin.Offline.config"

], "originalTargetFrameworks": [

"net6.0"

], "sources": {

"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft SDKs\\NuGetPackages\\": {}, "https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json": {}

}, "frameworks": {

"net6.0": { "targetAlias": "net6.0", "projectReferences": {}

}

}, "warningProperties": {

"warnAsError": [ "NU1605"

]

}

}, "frameworks": {

"net6.0": { "targetAlias": "net6.0",

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