buildcs

Provides a way of building Mono C# applications on Linux using a project definition defined in a .json file. The aim of this utility is to allow Mono C# projects to be easily compiled without needing to use an IDE.

Install

$ npm install -g buildcs

To use buildcs to build a set of csharp files you must create a project.json file which must be in the root directory of the project.

The project.json file has the following options:

Usage

buildcs {OPTIONS}

The available options are:

  --buildType,   Used to indicate if the build is a "debug" or "release" build. It defaults to a "debug" build if not provided.
  --projectFile, The name of the project file to use to build the project. Defaults to "project.json" if not provided.
  --colours, This is used to indicate if the tool should use coloured output when printing to the console. The allowed values are true and false. It defaults to true.
  -h            Display help for this command.

The Structure of a Project File

{
    "name": "hello",
    "version": "0.0.1",
    "description": "A description of the purpose of the application",
    "references": [
        {
            "name": "System"
        },
        {
            "name": "Nancy",
            "path": "./lib/Nancy.0.21.1/lib/net40/"
        },
    ],
    "sourceFiles": [
        "main.cs",
        "hello.cs",
        "goodbye.cs"
    ],
    "resources": [
        {
            "source": "View/index.html",
            "destination": "View/index.html"
        },
        {
            "source": "View/Test/test.html",
            "destination": "View/Test/test.html"
        }
    ],
    "buildTarget": "exe",
    "outputFilename": "hello",
    "sourceDirectory": "./src/",
    "destinationDirectory": "./build/",
    "libraryPath": [
        "./lib"
    ],
    "packageList": [
        "gtk-sharp-2.0"
    ],
    "warningLevel": 2,
    "warningsAsErrors": false
}

• name: The name of the project.
• version: The current version of the project.
• description: A summary of the purpose of the application.
• references: A list of references used by the project.
  • name: The name of the reference.
  • path: The location of the dll, this is used for copying dlls to the output directory.
• sourceFiles: A list of source files to be compiled.
• resources: A list of non-compilable resources that need to be copied to the destination directory on a successful build.
  • source: The source location of the resource file.
  • destination: The destination where the resource file is to be copied to.
• buildTarget: The type of file produced by the build process, this can have the values:
  • exe
  • library
  • module
  • winexe
• outputFilename: The filename to be given to the file produced by the build process. The file extension is determined by the build type.
• sourceDirectory: The root directory where the source files are located.
• destinationDirectory: The directory where the compiled file and reference dlls are to be output to.
• libraryPath: A list of directories where the reference dlls are located.
• packageList: A list of packages to include in the build. A package is a list of related assemblies.
• warningLevel: This allows you to set the level of warning to be emitted for the compilation task this can be the values 0 (lowest warning) to 4 (highest warning). This is optional.
• warningsAsErrors: This allows you to indicate to the compiler that that you want warnings to be treated as errors. The allowed values are true or false. It defaults to false. This is optional.

The default directory layout used

└── root project directory
    └── src
        └── <Source code files go here>
    └── project.json
    └── build