proposal for dotnet paket

[ctaggart]

This is not to be merged. I'm proposing that a donet-paket be created to make distributing paket extremely easy. Distributing build tools like paket and FAKE via DotNetCliToolReference's is a great way to do things for MSBuild 15. I shipped SourceLink v2 last week as one. Pretend in the code example that it was paket.ps1 instead. Perhaps the directory needs to be passed in too. Those details can be worked out.

[forki]

I think @enricosada is already working on this. Take a look into ./tools

[enricosada]

@ctaggart i love dotnetcli tool, i have some atm dotnet-mergenupkg, dotnet-proj-info.

but there are annoying drawback like:

• cannot have multiple *proj in same dir https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/4808
• require dotnet- prefix https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/4722 so need to rename fake.exe
• working directory of dotnet paket should be the same directory where is defined the .*proj who contains the DotNetCliTool.

but are good. Is possibile to use a tools directory with that (or .paket) like you have done.
i use that atm for repo specific tools, until a real per repo install exists (sdk 2.0?)

For paket i was doing some work/exploration in #2125
about boostrapper and deeper sdk integration.

For paket boostrapper i think a cli tool is not the best solution.

One constraint i know exists is paket should run on net40 too, without netcore sdk installed. just from vs (who embeed the sdk, but not the .net core tools).
Another is we need it at restore step, so need anyway to restore it somehow.

Best solution ihmo atm is to package fake as nupkg with multiple tools for framework (net45, netcoreapp1.* fdd).
At restore step, that package is downloaded with restore (so normal <PackageReference Include="Paket" Version="4.*" />, so easy to version) into .paket/out directory.
The paket target file will execute dotnet .paket/out/build/netstandard1.0/paket.dll or ./paket/out/build/net45/paket.exe (with mono prefix on mono), based on msbuild host runtime.
That can be specified in a .props file who set $(PaketCommand) property, and is imported later for next runs.

I have some questions left, like:

• how to run it from command line (what command wrap in the .\paket\paket script? dotnet paket or paket.exe/mono paket.exe?), maybe save the choose at restore step. if was restored in vs -> net45, otherwise netcore

[enricosada]

feedback welcome! not about my PR because is a bit stale, but about how to boostrap

[forki]

@enricosada is working on this in new PR.