AssemblyInfo: Determine which properties will be generated and their msbuild mappings

[brthor]

In dotnet cli AssemblyInfo is generated during each build from properties present in the project.json file. MSBuild currently relies on a template generated or user created AssemblyInfo to be present.

For certain options which need to be present in the csproj for pack (or other mechanisms) to function, it doesn't make sense to require putting these in both the project and AssemblyInfo.cs. (e.g. language )

For this reason it makes sense to generate a subset of the assemblyinfo from the project during build, and leave the rest to be manually entered.

To do this we need to determine what the subset of AssemblyInfo is that we're generating and how they map to msbuild options.

[davkean]

See this gist: https://gist.github.com/harikmenon/ee72194925985ed7f4eb80b517972369

[davkean]

@brthor, I and the NuGet team sat down together and came up with the following maps:

Attribute/NuSpec value	Type	MSBuild Property	Default	Notes
AssemblyTitle	Attribute	AssemblyTitle	AssemblyName
AssemblyDescription	Attribute	N/A	Description
AssemblyConfiguration	Attribute	Configuration	Debug	Existing property
AssemblyCompany	Attribute	AssemblyCompany	Authors
AssemblyProduct	Attribute	Product	AssemblyName
AssemblyCopyright	Attribute	N/A	Copyright
AssemblyTrademark	Attribute	N/A	Not present	Developers can define attribute if they want to set it
AssemblyCulture	Attribute	N/A	Not present	Developers can define attribute if they want to set it
ComVisible	Attribute	N/A	Not present
Guid	Attribute	N/A	Not present	Developers can define attribute if they want to set it
NeutralResourcesLanguage	Attribute	NeutralLanguage
AssemblyInformationalVersion	Attribute	Version	1.0.0	Make note this is SemVer version (ie 1.0.0-beta1 is valid)
AssemblyVersion	Attribute	AssemblyVersion	Version (major.minor.patch components only)
AssemblyFileVersion	Attribute	FileVersion	major.minor.patch components only of Version
PackageId	NuSpec	PackageId	AssemblyName
PackageVersion	NuSpec	PackageVersion	Version
Authors	NuSpec	Authors	AssemblyName
Owners	NuSpec	N/A	Not present in NuSpec
Description	NuSpec	Description	empty
Copyright	NuSpec	Copyright	empty
Summary	NuSpec	N/A	Not present in NuSpec
RequireLicenseAcceptance	NuSpec	PackageRequireLicenseAcceptance	false
LicenseUrl	NuSpec	PackageLicenseUrl	empty
ProjectUrl	NuSpec	PackageProjectUrl	empty
IconUrl	NuSpec	PackageIconUrl	empty
Tags	NuSpec	PackageTags	empty
ReleaseNotes	NuSpec	PackageReleaseNotes	empty
RepositoryUrl	NuSpec	RepositoryUrl	empty
RepositoryType	NuSpec	RepositoryType	empty
PackageType	NuSpec	?		NuGet will go offline and figure out this design

EDIT: 10/17/2016 by eerhardt - Add $(AssemblyCompany) as the MSBuild property for AssemblyCompany.  There are plenty of cases where users want to define AssemblyCompany differently from their nupkg Authors.  CoreFX is the first place I've found: AssemblyCompany = "Microsoft Corporation", but Authors = "microsoft;aspnet;dotnetframework".
Also added Authors to be defaulted to "AssemblyName" so `dotnet pack` works by default.

[brthor]

Language is already used by the nuget.build.task to determine appropriate analyzers.

https://github.com/NuGet/NuGet.BuildTasks/blob/dev/src/Microsoft.NuGet.Build.Tasks/Microsoft.NuGet.targets#L145

https://github.com/Microsoft/msbuild/blob/master/src/XMakeTasks/Microsoft.CSharp.CurrentVersion.targets#L40

Perhaps NeutralLanguage?

[davkean]

Ah yes, Language is programming language. Let's pick NeutralLanguage for now.

[nguerrera]

@davkean, @brthor, @srivatsn: I'm going to look at generating the AssemblyInfo.cs. Should we morph this issue to track the task and targets changes, or should I create a new tracking issue? Seems like the original issue to come up with the set of mappings is done with the table above, right?

[brthor]

I think it makes sense to leave this issue independent from the tracking of generating the assembly info.

My reasoning is that I expect as you dig in to generating these things, you might find that some of the properties need to change and update this issue. I'll need to react to these changes in the migration tool. It'll be easier to recognize this with less noise on the issue.

[nguerrera]

@brthor OK. Opened #57

[mrward]

Are summary and owners no longer supported?

Summary is displayed by the NuGet UI in the package list if the NuGet package defines it instead of the description which can be a large amount of text.

[srivatsn]

Is there any work left here? @brthor @nguerrera