dotnet-tegun 0.3.2-pre

dotnet-tegun - The KickAss DevOps utility

for creating NuGet-Packages out of ordinary, unpackaged assemblies.

Synopsis

TeGun (NuGet reversed) is a simple, yet handy cross-platform(.netcore) commandline-utility for creating nuget packages (nupkg) from a bunch of ordinary, unpackaged assemblies. The main goal is to provide a fast tooling experience when dealing with third-party assemblies that do not come packaged via e.g. Nuget.org. Such assemblies quick become unhandy when confronted with any CI/CD-Environment, as those often need to be either installed on (a variaty of) build-machines or - most of the time - get their way into version control systems, which unnecessarily bloats the code repository (especially in cloud-hosted build environments, where such dependencies can´t even be installed).

Even though most of the open-source based goodness out there is consumable via NuGet-feeds, various assemblies and whole frameworks exists that are not accessible via this route (maybe because they require a paid subscription and therfore are not in any public feed).

To help out in such on-premise scenarios, this project was born.

How it works

TeGun simply scans a directory for assemblies and analyzes their dependency-hierarchy. This hierarchy-information is then used to generate nuspec-files, which in turn can be used in conjunction with NuGet.exe to generate packages. The nuspec-files can then be used to automate package-creation or be used as a basis for more or finer grained modifications.

Download / Installation

Sorry folks, no pre-built / standalone releases yet.

However, TeGun is available as a dotnet cli extension. Just place an ItemGroup in any project-file that supports .NetCore tooling :

<ItemGroup>
  <DotNetCliToolReference Include="dotnet-tegun" Version="0.3.0-pre"/>
</ItemGroup>

and run

dotnet restore

Or just clone the repo and built for your self.

Prerequisits

• .net core 2 SDK installed for building and running
• basic knowledge of nuspec

Sample

Let´s assume we have an app that does some MS Office-automation. Hence it requires certain assemblies from the Office-SDKs. We identify a bunch of available assemblies and copy them to c:\temp\officeSDK. The contents of the directory might look like his:

• Microsoft.Office.Interop.OneNote.dll
• Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.dll
• Microsoft.Office.Interop.OutlookViewCtl.dll
• Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint.dll
• Microsoft.Office.Interop.Publisher.dll
• ...

In order to invoke TeGun, we utilize the dotnet cli extension point as described above. Therefor, we need a dummy project, which we create with

dotnet new console

Edit the created projcet file and include:

<ItemGroup>
  <DotNetCliToolReference Include="dotnet-tegun" Version="0.3.0-pre"/>
</ItemGroup>

after running

dotnet restore

we are now ready to let TeGun do it´s magic 😉

TeGun uses a config file for most of it´s settings atm. Think of it as C#-project file or a meta-nuspec. Let´s initialize a new config:

dotnet tegun init office

This wil create an initial office.config.json pointing to assemblies in the current directory.

Open the config to tweak the package-creation to your needs:

{
  "assemblies": {
    "sources": [ 
      "."  //scan the local directory for assemblies
    ],
    "excludePatterns": [ 
      "System.*" //exclude matching assemblies
    ],
    "bundles": [
      {
        "searchPattern": "Microsoft.Office.*", //Bundle all matching assemblies
        "packageId": "OfficeBundle.Sample",    //into a package
        "packageVersion": "1.2.3.4"            //with this version
      }
    ],
    "substitutions": [
      {
        "replace": "Interop",
        "with": "xxx"
      },
    ]
  },
  //general nuspec-creation settings
  "package": { 
    "authors": "earloc",
    "owners": "earloc",
    "tags": [ //additional tags
      "tags",
      "go",
      "here"
    ],
    "targetframeworks": [
      "net45"
    ],
    "versionFormat": "{Major}.{Minor}.{Build}.{Revision}", //Use full version number from scanned assembly as package version
    "title": {
      "prefix": "earloc.", //prefix package names
      "suffix": ""
    },
    "nuspecTemplate": null
  }
}

If we now invoke the command:

dotnet tegun nuspec office

tegun will create nuspec-files according to the above settings in the subfolder office/nuspecs:

• OfficeBundle.Sample.1.2.3.4.nuspec
• earloc.Microsoft.Office.xxx.OneNote.14.0.0.0.nuspec
• earloc.Microsoft.Office.xxx.Outlook.14.0.0.0.nuspec
• earloc.Microsoft.Office.xxx.OutlookViewCtl.14.0.0.0.nuspec
• earloc.Microsoft.Office.xxx.PowerPoint.14.0.0.0.nuspec
• earloc.Microsoft.Office.xxx.Publisher.14.0.0.0.nuspec
• ...

These nuspecs can now be further tweaked to your needs and be used to produce packages, e.g. with a simple batch file in the office subfolder:

set nuget=nuget.exe
for /R nuspecs %%f in (*.nuspec) do (
	%nuget% pack %%f  -OutputDirectory packages
)

will produce the following packages at office/packages:

• OfficeBundle.Sample.1.2.3.4.nupkg
• earloc.Microsoft.Office.xxx.OneNote.14.0.0.nupkg
• earloc.Microsoft.Office.xxx.Outlook.14.0.0.nupkg
• earloc.Microsoft.Office.xxx.OutlookViewCtl.14.0.0.nupkg
• earloc.Microsoft.Office.xxx.PowerPoint.14.0.0.nupkg
• earloc.Microsoft.Office.xxx.Publisher.14.0.0.nupkg
• ...