Sdk: CLI should support building a VS solution that includes non .NET Core projects

[dazhao-msft]

If a VS solution contains both .NET Core projects and non .NET Core projects, CLI commands such as 'dotnet restore', 'dotnet publish' won't work against the solution, since the CLI doesn't have necessary MSBuild targets to build those non .NET Core projects.

CLI should be able to detect which projects are .NET Core and only execute commands against them . We can keep the current behavior as default and introduce a new flag the enable this 'partial build' behavior.

[TheRealPiotrP]

@dazhao-msft yea, we really wanted to do something with this for 1.0.0 but there wasn't enough time. In the future we'd actually like to allow the Windows CLI to carry a copy of Desktop MSBuild + targets to fully light up this scenario. Moving to 2.0.0, for now, however.

[JamesNK]

This is useful for me. With project.json I could compile PCL and net20 assemblies from dotnet CLI. Now my build script requires VS2017 to be installed so I can use its msbuild to restore/build/pack my csproj. And I have the additional challenge to file the path to VS2017's msbuild. Very annoying compared to just using the CLI.

[JamesNK]

When is 2.0 expected to be out? This feature is the one thing blocking me from adopting dotnet cli completely with Newtonsoft.Json.

[eerhardt]

@JamesNK - which type of projects are blocking you from adopting dotnet cli completely? Is it only Docker? Or is it a different type of SDK that isn't available?

[JamesNK]

I have Portable class library targets I want to compile on my build server with CLI. Right now they aren't supported.

[JamesNK]

More info:

I want to be able to compile all of this project with CLI - https://github.com/JamesNK/Newtonsoft.Json/blob/aa5f28c09732db5fb3e316433547ea7cdecd8804/Src/Newtonsoft.Json/Newtonsoft.Json.Roslyn.csproj

Today I have to set DotnetOnly to true when compiling with CLI to avoid errors when building PCL targets.

<TargetFrameworks Condition="'$(DotnetOnly)'==''">net45;net40;net35;net20;netstandard1.0;netstandard1.3;portable-net45+win8+wpa81+wp8;portable-net40+win8+wpa81+wp8+sl5</TargetFrameworks>
<TargetFrameworks Condition="'$(DotnetOnly)'=='true'">netstandard1.0;netstandard1.3</TargetFrameworks>

But not compiling everything means I can't use new CLI features like building a NuGet package from a csproj.

[clairernovotny]

Somehow I doubt the old portable targets and reference assemblies will ever make it into the SDK builds, at least not until there's an acquisition story around SDK's that aren't in-box.

[clairernovotny]

And your build server can do it all, including build a nupkg, but you need VS 2017 installed on it (possibly just the VS 2017 build tools, but haven't checked what's in them...)

Then just run msbuild /t:restore Newtonsoft.Json.Roslyn.csproj, msbuild /t:pack Newtonsoft.Json.Roslyn.csproj and it'll restore, build and pack it.