Cake is a powerful tool that implements build functionality for various .NET solutions. It can extend your build with custom parameters and values that you want to reference on a CI/CD pipeline or in your metadata. In this article I will demonstrate how to use cake in order to build your .NET solution.
First create a Console App or another .NET solution that you want to build.
For this demonstration I will use the default template that is provided from cake website. You should rename and point to your solution name, in my case the solution is named ConsoleApp1.
The default build script includes three tasks.
- The first one cleans output of previous builds.
- The second one will build your application
- The third will run .net tests.
In the build script provided below, I have provided as configuration Debug. You can change this value on the configuration line.
var target = Argument("target", "Build"); var configuration = Argument("configuration", "Debug"); ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // TASKS ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Information("Beginning cleaning application....."); Task("Clean") .WithCriteria(c => HasArgument("rebuild")) .Does(() => { CleanDirectory($"./bin/{configuration}"); }); Information("Beginning building application....."); Task("Build") .IsDependentOn("Clean") .Does(() => { DotNetCoreBuild("./ConsoleApp1.sln", new DotNetCoreBuildSettings { Configuration = configuration, }); }); Information("DotNetCoreTest task ....."); Task("Test") .IsDependentOn("Build") .Does(() => { DotNetCoreTest("./ConsoleApp1.sln", new DotNetCoreTestSettings { Configuration = configuration, NoBuild = true, }); }); ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // EXECUTION ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// RunTarget(target);
In order to build you should place the above file on your solution directory with the name build.cake. Then you will have to run dotnet cake and the build will run.