Cake comes in three different flavors, which require different runners:
| Flavor | Runner |
|---|---|
| Cake Scripting | Cake .NET Tool |
| Standard .NET console application | Cake Frosting |
| Modern .NET SDK-based application | Cake.Sdk |
A console application has the advantage of full IDE support, like IntelliSense, refactoring and debugging, but requires a full .NET project. A scripting approach can be an easier solution for simple build scenarios, as it allows to use a single file. Cake.Sdk combines the best of both worlds, providing a modern SDK-based approach that works with both file-based scripts (requires .NET 10) and project-based builds (works with .NET 8, 9, and 10).
Feature overview
| Runner | Minimum required .NET version | Supported | IntelliSense |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cake .NET Tool | .NET 8 | [1] | |
| Cake Frosting | .NET 8 | ||
| Cake.Sdk | .NET 8 (project-based), .NET 10 (file-based) |
[1]: Limited support in Visual Studio Code. See IntelliSense in Visual Studio Code
Supported operating systems
The following table shows the supported operating systems for each runner.
| Runner | Windows | macOS | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cake .NET Tool | |||
| Cake Frosting | |||
| Cake.Sdk |
Supported platforms
The following table shows the supported platforms for each runner.
Note that the platform under which a build is running doesn't limit its build capabilities. It's absolutely possible for example to build a .NET Framework application with Cake running on .NET 6.
| Runner | .NET 10 | .NET 9 | .NET 8 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cake .NET Tool | |||
| Cake Frosting | |||
| Cake.Sdk |
Supported Build Systems
The following table shows build systems for which Cake provides specific integrations.
Cake can run on any build system, even if not included in this list. For the listed build systems Cake provides out of the box integrations. See Build Systems for details.
| Runner | AppVeyor | Azure Pipelines | Bamboo | Bitbucket Pipelines | Bitrise | Continua CI | GitHub Actions | GitLab CI | GoCD | Jenkins | MyGet | TeamCity | TravisCI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cake .NET Tool | |||||||||||||
| Cake Frosting | |||||||||||||
| Cake.Sdk |