Cake build

Question 1

What is cake and what was it based on?

Answer 1

Cake is a scripting tool using C# DSL. Based in the famous make tool for unix systems (1976)

Question 2

What is DSL?

Answer 2

Domain system language.

Question 3

What is the dependency-tracking model (aka dependency-based programming)?

Answer 3

You tell which tasks the specific tasks depend on (instead of calling one after another).

Question 4

What benefit the dependency-tracking model gives?

Answer 4

You can run specific jobs and the dependent jobs will be run naturally.

Question 5

Why would I use Cake in a C# project? What other reason (which is actually more important) than the first one?

Answer 5

because you’ll be using a single language for everything. Rich ecosystem of integrations (built-in tools) - integrate with everything you need.

Question 6

How to use a built-in tool? Is it difficult?

Answer 6

as simple as doing an using statement.

Question 7

What tools integrate with cake?

Answer 7

see:
https://pasteboard.co/JH67c5r.png

Question 8

How does cake work? which compiler does it use?

Answer 8

cake is a c# script which is parsed and compiled by Roslyn ON THE FLY.

Question 9

Can I run regular .NET code in cake? Which namespaces are available to us by default?

Answer 9

yes. cake.core.dll and cake.common.dll are available by default to us.

Question 10

How would we import an assembly if we did not have cake (think on powershell)? How does cake solve it?

Answer 10

We would need to store the dlls (and its dependencies) manually. Cake solve it by allowing referencing nuget packages (awesome).

Question 11

What is a Task (Task = cake alias)? What does it execute?

Answer 11

meant to do one single thing (such as compile the application). Execute an anonymous function (aka lamba)

Question 12

What is fluent interface?

Answer 12

Is when you can chain call to methods together (Task.DependsOn().Does(() =>)

Question 13

Does the order of the fluent interface chaning methods matter?

Answer 13

Yes.. top down

Question 14

What are the four basic building blocks of cake?

Answer 14

Task, IsDependentOn, RunTarget, Argument.

Question 15

What does the WithCriteria alias do? What happens when not met?

Answer 15

Asserts a condition. halts and throw error if false.

Question 16

Does cake allow error handling? What are the three aliases?

Answer 16

ContinueOnError, ReportError, OnError

Question 17

How to manually halt a script?

Answer 17

just throw an exception.

Question 18

What does the setup and teardown methods passes as parameters? When are they ran?

Answer 18

context and task information. Before the first task and after the last one.

Question 19

How does the cake object model look like? What are the main concepts?

Answer 19

https://pasteboard.co/JIa6o1z.png
main concepts: Script inherits from script host (contains RunTarget, Task and other aliases), where Script encapsulates the Context object which contains environment variables and other handy stuff.

Question 20

What do the information and verbose aliases do?

Answer 20

they log information

Question 21

how to build a sln? what does it run behind the scenes?

Answer 21

DotNetBuild(), uses msbuild behind the scene.

Question 22

Why not using directly MsBuild alias?

Answer 22

because DotNetBuild is multi platform (which in the past called xbuild, now i think they all call the same thing).

Question 23

What does the bootstraper do?

Answer 23

downloads nuget and then downloads the cake packages.

Question 24

What are the default arguments of the build.ps1?

Answer 24

FilePath, default to build.cake
Target TaskName, Default to Default
Configuration Name, default release
Verbosity level, default verbose
Experimental, allows using latest c# features
DryRun do not actually execute anything
Any custom argument, argument=value

Question 25

Besides sending arguments to build.ps1, what are the other two options? What is the priority?

Answer 25

Argument > cake.config > EnvironmentVariables.

Question 26

What are the versions of cake? which platforms does it run?

Answer 26

cake = framework / mono,
Cake.CoreCLR = .NET Core

.NET CORE = DEFAULT TO USE.

Question 27

What does the processor directive can do for cake? is it equal to c#?

Answer 27

can download tools or reference other cake scripts.

Question 28

When the preprocessor directive is read?

Answer 28

before anything else.

Question 29

What are the two most common tool directives?

Answer 29

tools and references to other libs.

Question 30

Can I register a custom tool on cake, how’s that done?

Answer 30

yes, call context tools register file commands.

Question 31

How to load another cake script? what’s the short version?

Answer 31

via preprocessor directive #load path to cake. #l

Question 32

Can I load cake scripts from nuget packages?

Answer 32

yes, use the same load but with nuget

Question 33

how to change the nuget_package source on cake?

Answer 33

change on config file

Question 34

does cake has a FilePath type? why using it?

Answer 34

yes, brings convenience to deal with files.