[Feature] Generate Directory.Build.props during init generator

[AgentEnder]

Current Behavior

Currently, we set the output path of C# projects in the monorepo individually. We do this by manually specifying them in each .csproj file. This has issues.

• If projects are moved, relative path is broken (see [Feature] add a new move generator to @nx-dotnet/core #406, [Feature] nx conventions on shared dependencies, unit tests with code, dist #468)
• This is fragile, and a rather messy area of the codebase

Desired Behavior

During @nx-dotnet/core:init, we should scaffold a minimal Directory.Build.props file that contains the setup for output paths.

Additional context
We need to ensure that the creation of this file is idempotent. init is called automatically at the beginning of each project generator, and the file shouldn't be recreated each time in case dev's customize it.

[tzuge]

I am currently setting up dotnet projects in a monorepo to better understand this. For 'app' vs 'lib', the output path is different in nx convention, and this appears to be achievable with dotnet by checking the SDK.

  <PropertyGroup Condition="'$(UsingMicrosoftNETSdkWeb)' == 'false'">
    <BaseOutputPath>$(RepoRoot)dist/libs/$(MSBuildProjectName)</BaseOutputPath>
  </PropertyGroup>

  <PropertyGroup Condition="'$(UsingMicrosoftNETSdkWeb)' == 'true'">
    <BaseOutputPath>$(RepoRoot)dist/apps/$(MSBuildProjectName)</BaseOutputPath>
  </PropertyGroup>

[AgentEnder]

That's interesting too, but the workspace layout is determined by a property in nx.json. Ideally, we should read nx.json to determine the apps/libs folders when creating this file. @nrwl/devkit exports readWorkspaceConfiguration, which we can access the appsDir / libsDir with.

During init, we could use it to update these.

At the same time though, I'm not really a fan of checking for the .NET web SDK here... Console applications as an example would not be picked up. Nx traditionally classifies e2e as an app, which this would miss etc. Perhaps it would be better to not bother with libs/apps directory in the output path. Do something like:

  <PropertyGroup>
    <BaseOutputPath>$(RepoRoot)dist/nx-dotnet/$(MSBuildProjectName)</BaseOutputPath>
  </PropertyGroup>

[tzuge]

Agreed about using appsDir / libsDir from the workspace config during init creation of the Directory.Build.* files. Regarding excluding apps / libs from the output path, I feel like that's not ideal since it's different from the non-dotnet projects.

Is there currently a generator that results in a project with IsPackable set to true? Although I suppose that really maps to "publishable libs" and not "libs"; perhaps should be the result in case of nx g @nx-dotnet/core:classlib --publishable.

[AgentEnder]

There is a different strategy to this that I've thought of that would match typical Nx dist output better. If we could represent ${workspaceRoot}/dist/${projectRoot} in the Directory.Build.Props file than that would match up better than what we've been discussing.

There's not the concept of a publishable lib in nx-dotnet, the generators don't do a ton of extra stuff beyond dotnet new aside from

• Setting up prebuild module boundaries task
• Setting up dist folder outputs

[tzuge]

Great idea. This seems to work.

<RepoRoot>$([System.IO.Path]::GetFullPath('$(MSBuildThisFileDirectory)'))</RepoRoot>
<BaseOutputPath>$(RepoRoot)dist/$([System.IO.Path]::GetRelativePath($(RepoRoot), $(MSBuildProjectDirectory)))</BaseOutputPath>

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity after it was closed. Please open a new issue for related bugs.