Would it be possible to effectively make my own aliases from _inside_ a cake script?

[gitfool]

After I updated gitfool/Cake.Dungeon for Cake v3, I hit the usual issues with incompatible addins, so I looked at my usage more closely and realized I only needed a single alias from them! I subsequently worked around the issues by removing the addins and inlining my own extensions to ICakeContext. This works well enough but has the distinct disadvantage that what was an alias available directly (without qualification) from inside a task must now be explicitly qualified with a Context namespace, like Context.FileReadText.

Hence I am now pondering would it be possible to effectively make my own aliases from inside a cake script, without needing a separately compiled addin, such that they can be used elsewhere in the same loaded cake scripts without qualification. That would be really handy for very simple aliases like the ones I inlined.

Obviously this does not work out of the box, unless I'm missing something, so is this a good idea and what changes would be required?

[devlead]

Wondering if it's something like what Cake codegen does you're after, that would look something like

public static string FileReadText(this ICakeContext context, FilePath file)
    => System.IO.File.ReadAllText(file.MakeAbsolute(context.Environment).FullPath);

public string FileReadText(FilePath file)
   => Context.FileReadText(file);

One static extension method and one local utilizing local Context property. Making it avail both in script and a static context.

[gitfool]

It was under my nose the whole time. Perfect!

[devlead]

Having the extension method too, means it'll work in in a static context too, good if you release as a recipe.

I.e. if you use a static lamda

Setup(static context => Context.FileReadText("data.txt"));

But at same time if your not using it, it could just be YAGNI.

Regardless unsure we've got scoping well documented, if not, could be good addition to website.

[gitfool]

Good point re recipe. Tweaked! 😉