ASP.NET 5 RC1 On Linux – Part IV – First App Analysis

Looking at the project.json from my last post

We see the following

{
  "version": "1.0.0-*",
  "description": "ConsoleApp1 Console Application",
  "authors": [ "knarfalingus" ],
  "tags": [ "hello", "world" ],
  "projectUrl": "https://www.knarfalingus.com",
  "licenseUrl": "https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT",

  "compilationOptions": {
    "emitEntryPoint": true
  },

  "dependencies": {
  },

  "commands": {
    "ConsoleApp1": "ConsoleApp1"
  },

  "frameworks": {
    "dnxcore50": {
      "dependencies": {
       "Microsoft.CSharp": "4.0.1-beta-23516",
       "System.Console": "4.0.0-beta-23516",
      }
    }
  }
}

To simplify, we can actually remove the following

  "compilationOptions": {
    "emitEntryPoint": true
  }

This wasn’t required as the runtime will find the static Main() method.

Also we can remove the metadata, authors, projectUrl and licenseUrl etc. I added those arbitrarily anyway.

What is interesting is the commands

  "commands": {
    "ConsoleApp1”: “ConsoleApp1”
  }

The above is typical of what Visual Studio 2015 would create. The name “ConsoleApp1” doesn’t have to match the application/namespace, for example the following works just as well.

  "commands": {
    “xyz”: "ConsoleApp1”
  }

This can be explicitly run by executing

dnx xyz

The surprising part I found when trying this on Windows was, the value “ConsoleApp1” refers to the folder the app is in, not the namespace or application title. For example with this project.json

{
  "version": "1.0.0-*",

  "dependencies": {
  },

  "commands": {
    “xyz”: "ConsoleApp1"
  },

  "frameworks": {
    "dnxcore50": {
      "dependencies": {
        "Microsoft.CSharp": "4.0.1-beta-23516",
        "System.Console": "4.0.0-beta-23516",
      }
    }
  }
}

And the two files, project.json and Program.cs in a ConsoleApp1 directory, if I change into the directory from the parent directory using cd ConsoleApp1, dnx xyz works but if I do cd consoleapp1, in Powershell it doesn’t!, Powershell introduces case into the folder name see below. This doesn’t happen with the standard console.

I am not sure if this is a bug or not due to the fact that ASP.NET is targeting systems with case sensitive file systems whereas in Windows the file system is not case sensitive (by default).