Ability to build at root same as at leaf (or vice versa). Right now I have to learn two commands with different parameters in order to work.

[ericstj]

CC @danmosemsft could you please provide more details?

[danmoseley]

At the root of corefx, you must use build.cmd to build eg build -build -buildtest -test. In a leaf, you must use dotnet build (or maybe msbuild) eg dotnet build -- /t:build;test

If it was possible to use "dotnet build" at the root (presumably with a superset of potential properties) that might make it easier for contributors to learn how to work in the repo.

Perhaps it's fine as is though? And build.cmd does have the advantage of documenting itself with -?.

[ViktorHofer]

It's already possible to build and test a leaf project with the build script from root. Why isn't that sufficient? The build script also doesn't require a globally installed dotnet installation and has the advantage of using the same host for building from root and building individual libraries with it.

[danmoseley]

Don't many people work with their console in the leaf folder itself? I do - I can open the editor there in context, I can do grep, etc. I only really am at the root for the first build. Maybe it's just me because I'm command line focused?

I don't feel strongly about this, so if it's just me then we can close it...

@stephentoub

[stephentoub]

Don't many people work with their console in the leaf folder itself?

I do.

It's already possible to build and test a leaf project with the build script from root. Why isn't that sufficient?

Because it's cumbersome. You have to either:

1. Have multiple windows open, one at the root and one at the leaf.
2. Be in the leaf directory and use ..\..\..\..\ and so on to get up to the commands at the root.
3. Be in the root directory and need to specify long paths like src\System.Net.Security\tests\Functional\ in order to get to files in the leaf.

[ViktorHofer]

We briefly talked about this offline. What I could think of is a repo tool which wraps the build script. A repo tool is available in the entire repository tree without modifying the path. That would require no global dotnet installation anymore.

Details to figure out:

• Mark as optional to not hinder bring up of new distros/environments
• Tightly couple it to corefx or make it configurable so that other repositories can also use it, ie WinForms, WPF, etc.

I would like to know if that's something compelling or if we should instead focus on making it easier to use dotnet in a leaf (ie use same dotnet as during root build).

[ViktorHofer]

just FYI, dotnet build and dotnet restore now works in the repo root as we added a Build.proj repo entrypoint file (which was necessary to have for nuget static graph restore).

In example you can now do: C:\git\runtime> dotnet build /p:Subset=clr+libs /p:RuntimeConfiguration=Release. The supported scenarios are currently limited as Arcade is build script driven.

[ViktorHofer]

See dotnet/arcade#5384 which tracks supporting dotnet <verb> from the repository root instead of the current script based entrypoints.