dotbuild

A cross-platform CLI utility that orchestrates dotnet project workflows. Run clean, restore, build, run, and test in a single command — actions are automatically sorted into the correct order and redundant steps are removed.

Installation

npm install -g dotbuild

Usage

Run from any directory containing a .sln or .csproj file.

# Run the default pipeline: clean → restore → test
dotbuild

# Run specific actions (in any order — they will be sorted automatically)
dotbuild clean
dotbuild restore build
dotbuild clean test build restore

Available Actions

| Action | Command | Description | |-----------|------------------|---------------------------------| | clean | dotnet clean | Remove build artifacts | | restore | dotnet restore | Restore NuGet packages | | build | dotnet build | Compile the project | | run | dotnet run | Run the project | | test | dotnet test | Run tests (also builds) |

Automatic Ordering

Actions are always executed in canonical order regardless of how they are passed:

clean → restore → build → run → test

# These are equivalent:
dotbuild clean restore build test
dotbuild test build restore clean

Smart Optimization

Redundant steps are automatically removed:

• test already builds, so passing both build and test will only run test

# build is dropped because test already builds
dotbuild build test
# → runs: test

dotbuild clean test build restore
# → runs: clean → restore → test

Fail-Fast Execution

Actions run sequentially. If any action fails, execution stops immediately — subsequent actions will not run.

dotbuild clean restore build
# If restore fails, build will not run

Default Behavior

Running dotbuild with no arguments executes: clean → restore → test

(build is included in the default set but optimized away since test covers it.)

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v18+)
• .NET SDK

License

MIT