dotnet-run-script

A dotnet tool to run arbitrary commands from a project's "scripts" object. If you've used npm this is the equivalent of npm run with almost identical functionality and options. It is compatible with .NET Core 3.1 and newer.

See the about page for more information on how this tool came to be and why it exists at all.

Installation

This tool is meant to be used as a dotnet local tool. To install it run the following:

dotnet new tool-manifest
dotnet tool install run-script

Warning

Installing this tool globally is not recommended. PowerShell defines the alias r for the Invoke-History command which prevents this from being called. You'll also run into issues calling this from your scripts since global tools don't use the dotnet prefix.

Keeping current

Tools like Dependabot and Renovate don't currently support updating dotnet local tools. One way to automate this is to use a GitHub Actions workflow to check for updates and create PRs when new versions are available, which is what this repo does.

Options

Name	Description
--if-present	Don't exit with an error code if the script isn't found
--script-shell	The shell to use when running scripts (cmd, pwsh, sh, etc.)
-v, --verbose	Enable verbose output
--version	Show version information
--help	Show help and usage information

Arguments passed after the double dash are passed through to the executing script.

dotnet r build --verbose -- --configuration Release

Color output

This tool supports the DOTNET_SYSTEM_CONSOLE_ALLOW_ANSI_COLOR_REDIRECTION environment variable. Setting this to 1 or true will force color output on all platforms. Due to a limitation of the Console apis this will not work on Windows when output is redirected in environments such as GitHub Actions.

There is also support for the NO_COLOR environment variable. Setting this to any value will disable color output.

GitHub Actions

On GitHub Actions you need to set the environment values DOTNET_SYSTEM_CONSOLE_ALLOW_ANSI_COLOR_REDIRECTION and TERM. TERM should be xterm or xterm-256color.

Configuration

In your project's global.json add a scripts object:

{
  "sdk": {
    "version": "8.0.203",
    "rollForward": "latestPatch"
  },
  "scriptShell": "pwsh", // Optional
  "scripts": {
    "build": "dotnet build --configuration Release",
    "test": "dotnet test --configuration Release",
    "ci": "dotnet r build && dotnet r test",
  }
}

Note

The shell used depends on the OS. On Windows CMD is used, on Linux, macOS, and WSL sh is used. This can be overridden by setting the scriptShell property or by passing the --script-shell option with the name of the shell to use.

The env command is a special built-in command that lists all available environment variables. You can override this with your own command if you wish.

Usage

Use dotnet r [<scripts>...] [options] to run the scripts. Anything you can run from the command line can be used in a script. You can also call other scripts to chain them together such as a ci script that calls the build, test, and package scripts.

To help keep your configuration easy to read and maintain pre and post scripts are supported. These are run before and after the main script.

This is an example of a pre script that clears the build artifacts folder, and a post script that writes to the console saying the command completed.

{
  "scripts": {
    "prepackage": "del /Q ./artifacts",
    "package": "dotnet pack --configuration Release --no-build --output ./artifacts",
    "postpackage": "echo \"Packaging complete\""
  }
}

Multiple script execution

Multiple scripts can be called at the same time like so:

dotnet r build test

This will run the build script and if it returns a 0 exit code it will then run the test script. The --if-present option can be used to skip scripts that don't exist.

{
  "scripts": {
    "build": "dotnet build",
    "test:unit": "dotnet test",
    "package": "dotnet pack"
  }
}

dotnet r build test:unit test:integration package --if-present

Arguments passed after the double dash are passed through to each executing script. In this example both the --configuration and --framework options will be passed to each of the four scripts when running them.

dotnet r build test:unit test:integration package -- --configuration Release --framework net8.0

Globbing or wildcard support

Multiple scripts can be run at the same time using globbing. This means dotnet r test:* will match test:unit and test:integration and run them in series in the order they're listed in the global.json file.

Globbing is handled by the DotNet.Glob library and currently supports all of its patterns and wildcards.

Working directory

The working directory is set to the root of the project where the global.json is located. If you need to get the folder the command was executed from you can do so using the INIT_CWD environment variable.

Common build environments

When using this tool on a build server, such as GitHub Actions, you might want to use a generic workflow that calls a common set of scripts such as build, test, and package. These might not be defined in all of your projects and if a script that doesn't exist is called an error is returned. To work around this you can call them with the --if-present flag which will return a 0 exit code for not found scripts.

Example shared GitHub Actions workflow:

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3

      # Always runs
      - name: Run build
        run: dotnet r build

      # Only runs if `test` script is present
      - name: Run test
        run: dotnet r test --if-present

      # Only runs if `package` script is present
      - name: Run package
        run: dotnet r package --if-present