Provide alternative tool paths

[fwinkelbauer]

The cake documentation for tools state that Cake can ask a Tool for "additional, alternative paths". Looking at the interface signature of the Tool class I found this method:

protected virtual IEnumerable<FilePath> GetAlternativeToolPaths(TSettings settings);

I was wondering if:

• this is the method mentioned in the above documentation
• it would be a good idea to add e.g. the default location of metrics.exe for Visual Studio 2015. This would remove the necessity of manually registering the tool (as shown here)

Another question I have is:

• Why does the above GetAlternativeToolPaths offer TSettings as a parameter? Should TSettings contain a property which states the tool version (e.g. metrics VS 2015)?

@gep13 May I ask for your insight/input?

[gep13]

@fwinkelbauer yes, that is exactly correct.

You can see an example of this here:

https://github.com/cake-contrib/Cake.CMake/blob/develop/src/Cake.CMake/CMakeRunner.cs#L81

P.S. As a side note...

Did you see these:
cake-contrib/Home#3
cake-contrib/Home#2

Hoping to get you added to both as well.

[fwinkelbauer]

@gep13 thanks! I'll experiment with that method

Yes, I have seen these issues. I feel kinda weird admitting that I do not have a twitter or a slack account. Do you feel like joing slack is the best way to go forward with the overall cake-contrib group (e.g. concerning future changes or maintenance)?

[gep13]

@fwinkelbauer the Cake Contrib Slack Team is intended as a central place where addin maintainers can discuss and ask questions. In addition, the Slack Team integrations for things like GitHub and AppVeyor, make it very easy to monitor what is going on with other projects within the Cake Contrib Organisation. We use Slack entensively within the Core Cake Team, and I believe it will be a valuable resource for the Cake Contrib Team as well.

[fwinkelbauer]

I have just pushed a first implementation of the alternative tool paths feature. What I still have to do:

• Understand how I can write a test for this using the Cake addin lib
• Check if there are other metrics.exe versions out there besides VS2013 and VS2015
• Update code snippet documentation (code comments, README, ...)
• Make sure that GetAlternativeToolPaths really provides the highest possible tool using the VsMetricsToolVersion.Default setting. @gep13 can you give some insight on this? I am assuming that Cake would take the first available path it would find. So if the returned collection is sorted descending I should be fine, right?

@gep13 I have sent you an e-mail using your blog's contact form regarding the Slack invitation