This is a guide to get started with Cake Frosting and to show you how Cake Frosting works.

Installation and scaffolding

This tutorial uses Cake Frosting, which allows you to write builds as standard console applications as part of your solution. See Runners for other possibilities of how to run Cake builds.

To create a new Cake Frosting project you need to install the Frosting template:

dotnet new install Cake.Frosting.Template

Create a new Frosting project:

dotnet new cakefrosting

This will create the Cake Frosting project and bootstrapping scripts.

Initial build project

The Program class contains code to configure and run the Cake host:

public static class Program
{
    public static int Main(string[] args)
    {
        return new CakeHost()
            .UseContext<BuildContext>()
            .Run(args);
    }
}

The BuildContext class can be used to add additional custom properties. The default template contains an example property Delay which can be set through a --delay argument. You can remove this property and customize the properties to your specific needs.

public class BuildContext : FrostingContext
{
    public bool Delay { get; set; }

    public BuildContext(ICakeContext context)
        : base(context)
    {
        Delay = context.Arguments.HasArgument("delay");
    }
}

The file also contains three classes for tasks:

[TaskName("Hello")]
public sealed class HelloTask : FrostingTask<BuildContext>
{
    public override void Run(BuildContext context)
    {
        context.Log.Information("Hello");
    }
}

[TaskName("World")]
[IsDependentOn(typeof(HelloTask))]
public sealed class WorldTask : AsyncFrostingTask<BuildContext>
{
    // Tasks can be asynchronous
    public override async Task RunAsync(BuildContext context)
    {
        if (context.Delay)
        {
            context.Log.Information("Waiting...");
            await Task.Delay(1500);
        }

        context.Log.Information("World");
    }
}

[TaskName("Default")]
[IsDependentOn(typeof(WorldTask))]
public class DefaultTask : FrostingTask
{
}

The Default task has a dependency to the World task, and the World task has a dependency on the Hello task. The World task is an asynchronous task which waits for one and a half seconds if the Delay property is set.

Example build pipeline

The following example creates a simple build pipeline consisting of a clean task, a task compiling an MsBuild solution and a task which tests the solution.

Add the required using statements:

using Cake.Common;
using Cake.Common.IO;
using Cake.Common.Tools.DotNet;
using Cake.Common.Tools.DotNet.Build;
using Cake.Common.Tools.DotNet.Test;

Remove the Delay property from the BuildContext class and add a property MsBuildConfiguration, which stores the configuration of the solution which should be built:

public class BuildContext : FrostingContext
{
    public string MsBuildConfiguration { get; set; }

    public BuildContext(ICakeContext context)
        : base(context)
    {
        MsBuildConfiguration = context.Argument("configuration", "Release");
    }
}

The HelloTask and WorldTask class can be deleted.

Create a new class CleanTask for cleaning the directory:

[TaskName("Clean")]
public sealed class CleanTask : FrostingTask<BuildContext>
{
    public override void Run(BuildContext context)
    {
        context.CleanDirectory($"../src/Example/bin/{context.MsBuildConfiguration}");
    }
}

Create a new class BuildTask for building the solution:

[TaskName("Build")]
[IsDependentOn(typeof(CleanTask))]
public sealed class BuildTask : FrostingTask<BuildContext>
{
    public override void Run(BuildContext context)
    {
        context.DotNetBuild("../src/Example.sln", new DotNetBuildSettings
        {
            Configuration = context.MsBuildConfiguration,
        });
    }
}

Create a new class TestTask for testing the solution:

[TaskName("Test")]
[IsDependentOn(typeof(BuildTask))]
public sealed class TestTask : FrostingTask<BuildContext>
{
    public override void Run(BuildContext context)
    {
        context.DotNetTest("../src/Example.sln", new DotNetTestSettings
        {
            Configuration = context.MsBuildConfiguration,
            NoBuild = true,
        });
    }
}

Update the DefaultTask class to call the new tasks:

[IsDependentOn(typeof(TestTask))]
public sealed class Default : FrostingTask
{
}

Running build script

Run the build script:

• Windows
• Linux
• MacOS