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.Net Core Global Tools: A fresh start for distributing command line apps in dotnet

TL;DR: The Microsoft ecosystem now allows easy distribution of .net core tools with a npm-style approach.

Recently I have been revamping a pet project of mine that is a dotnet cli application. Previously, it was quite pain to roll it out new versions in any machine I wanted to use it.

Using the dotnet cli extensibility model, I had to add a reference to it inside a project file (.csproj) to use it in that project’s context. Or had to download it and add its path to the PATH environment, so I could use it across the machine. So technically, it was a bit of a faff.

Now, with .Net Core Global tools, you can deploy CLI apps in the same way as you can do with npm for NodeJs applications. A single command allows you to download and install compatible applications:

dotnet tool install -g NugetPackageName

Note that, this is only supported on .Net Core SDK 2.1.300 and above. Therefore, make sure you have that in your machine before trying it. ;)

Producing your own Global Tool

To make your console applications compatible, you need to add the entry <IsTool>true</IsTool> in your .csproj. It is also important that you target netcoreapp2.1 and above.

You could test it locally by:

dotnet pack src\dotnet-ildasm\dotnet-ildasm.csproj -c Debug
dotnet tool install -g dotnet-ildasm --add-source C:\git\dotnet-ildasm\src\dotnet-ildasm\bin\Debug\

Or getting a specific version from an alternative nuget feed:

dotnet tool install -g dotnet-ildasm --version 0.9.1-beta-build-0005 --add-source https://www.myget.org/F/pjbgf/api/v3/index.json

Wrapping up….

As everything, there are down sides to it. For example, this feature is a breaking change on .Net Core, so by default you won’t be able to target multiples framework when compiling.

However, we now got a really easy way to create and distribute cli tools, which should help with the growth of .net apps in that space.