Support for `dotnet` CLI and ninja generator for C#

Development
6

My thinking was to have the process of generating the project files be a per-target process. In the draft MR, I have the variable IsDotNetSdkTarget a member variable of cmGeneratorTarget. What I am not sure is how do we get there?

My thinking of introducing the language was to enable the switch at global level. That doesn’t seem a good idea given your comments. How about we do the following?

  • Introduce a flag CMAKE_CSHARP_DOTNET which when set will prefer using .Net CLI for identifying and testing C# toolchain.
  • When CMAKE_CSHARP_DOTNET is TRUE, modify CMakeDetermineCSharpCompiler.cmake to see if dotnet build, dotnet run, and dotnet test succeed.
  • If dotnet build succeeds, Ninja generator can be used.
  • If dotnet build doesn’t succeed, Ninja generator can’t be used. CMake will see if csc is available and if so, use that for VS generator.
  • Introduce a new per-target property DOTNET_SDK_STYLE_PROJECT which will generate SDK-style project for C# files.

Open question:

  • How do we set DOTNET_SDK_STYLE_PROJECT to true for all projects?
  • Do we need the policy introduced in MR 6634 at all?

Thoughts/comments?

From implementation perspective, I can modify MR 6634 to use a per-target property and the rest of the code there shouldn’t need to be changed. Then, the next change would be introducing CMAKE_CSHARP_DOTNET (or other names that people want to use :slight_smile: ).