Tool Resolution

The philosophy behind Cake is to reduce the number of dependencies for Cake as well as to not store executable in the source code repository. Instead a set of conventions are used to locate executables on disc.

1. Use explicitly set tool path on ToolSettings ToolPath property.
2. Via IToolLocator registered path (see example below).
3. Try to find the tool by searching ./tools/**/mytool.exe.
4. Look through all paths in the PATH environment variable and look for mytool.exe.
5. Ask the tool wrapper for additional, alternative paths.

By inheriting from the Tool class when implementing tools, you will get the conventions "for free".

You can override and register tool paths using the IToolLocator Tools property on the ICakeContext:

Setup(context => {
    context.Tools.RegisterFile("C:/ProgramData/chocolatey/bin/NuGet.exe");
});

If you want to use the tool resolution from your Cake script for generic tasks, i.e. starting a process, that's certainly possible using the Resolve(string) method:

Task("NuGet-Help-Install")
    .Does(()=> {
    FilePath nugetPath = Context.Tools.Resolve("nuget.exe");
    StartProcess(nugetPath, new ProcessSettings {
        Arguments = new ProcessArgumentBuilder()
            .Append("help")
            .Append("install")
        });
});