Can I define a reusable subroutine/function/method within a Cake script? - cakebuild

Question

I'm trying out Cake (C# Make). So far all the examples and documentation have the script file declaring all of its code inside delegates, like this:
Task("Clean")
.Does(() =>
{
// Delete a file.
DeleteFile("./file.txt");
// Clean a directory.
CleanDirectory("./temp");
});
However, one of the reasons I'm interested in using Cake is the possibility of writing my build scripts in a similar way to how I write code, as the scripts use a C#-based DSL. Included in this possibility is the ability to separate code that I use into methods (or functions / subroutines, whatever terminology is appropriate) so I can separate concerns and reuse code. For example, I may want to run the same set of steps for a multiple SKUs.
While I realize that I could create my own separate DLL with Script Aliases, I would like to avoid having to recompile a separate project every time I want to change these bits of shared code when working on the build script. Is there a way to define, inline with the normal build.cake file, methods that can still run the Cake aliases (e.g., DeleteFile) and can themselves be called from my Cake tasks?

Answer 1

Cake is C#, so you can create classes, methods, just like in regular C#
I.e. declare a class in a cake file
public class MyClass
{
public void MyMethod()
{
}
public static void MyStaticMethod()
{
}
}
and then use it a script like
var myClass = new MyClass();
// Call instance method
myClass.MyMethod();
//Call static method
MyClass.MyStaticMethod();
The Cake DSL is based on Roslyn scripting so there are some differences, code is essentially already in a type so you can declare a method without a class for reuse
public void MyMethod()
{
}
and then it can be called like a global methods
MyMethod();
A few gotchas, doing class will change scoping so you won't have access to aliases / context and global methods. You can get around this by i.e. passing ICakeContext as a parameter to class
public class MyClass
{
ICakeContext Context { get; }
public MyClass(ICakeContext context)
{
Context = context;
}
public void MyMethod()
{
Context.Information("Hello");
}
}
then used like this
// pass reference to Cake context
var myClass = new MyClass(Context);
// Call instance method which uses an Cake alias.
myClass.MyMethod();
You can have extension methods, but these can't be in a class, example:
public static void MyMethod(this ICakeContext context, string message)
{
context.Information(message);
}
Context.MyMethod("Hello");