Make build.cmd with no args build everything

[natemcmaster]

Currently, running build.cmd doesn't build everything in this repo. You have to know about special parameters to get the repo build Debian, RPM, and Windows installers.

Proposal: let's make build.cmd/.sh without arguments build everything in the repo. That includes:

• C#, C++, TypeScript, and Java projects
• On Windows, MSI installers.
• On Linux, the installer that matches the current platform (deb, rpm, tar.gz, etc.)

Tricky bits: this is not trivial because we have some tricky requirements.

• the Windows Server Hosting bundle needs to include both the x64 and x86 versions of ASP.NET Core. Should build.cmd on Windows compile both x64 and x86, or just one?
• Pre-requisites. To build everything, you need .NET 3.5 (for the Wix Toolset), NodeJS, the JDK, Visual Studio, Windows SDKs, and more. We don't have scripts to install or acquire all of these automatically. We should add scripts which check early on for these prerequisties because builds will often fail with confusing messages later if prereqs are not met.

[pakrym]

the Windows Server Hosting bundle needs to include both the x64 and x86 versions of ASP.NET Core. Should build.cmd on Windows compile both x64 and x86, or just one?

Maybe build.cmd should invoke x86/x64 and then "unifying" build when ran from the root.

[natemcmaster]

@Eilon what are your thoughts on this one? Do you want contributors working our repo to be able to run "build.cmd" and have it build everything? I can see this going two ways.

Pros:

• build.cmd is simple and you don't have to hunt for command line args

Cons:

• For this work, you must have all prerequisites installed, which include .NET 3.5 (wix toolset), NodeJS, JDK, and Visual Studio.

[Eilon]

Well, I don't speak for all contributors, so I don't know 😄

One way to go about this is that if we don't have any data on any actual problems that are being reported, to leave things as they are.

For example:

• Are people complaining? (E.g. that the build takes too long? Doesn't produce enough assets? Can't figure out how to get a particular sub-component to build?)
• Are we getting poor quality PRs because the build doesn't do what might seem reasonable?

[natemcmaster]

I heard a few of our team members say it was hard to figure out how to build installers. I made a few changes that should make it easier now. And I have a few more planned as a part of targeting pack work.

Other than that, most complaints have been about trouble with installing prerequisites like Visual Studio. Implementing this change to build.cmd would probably make that even worse by increasing the prerequisites just to get a successful build.cmd.

For what it's worth, as of Friday, PRs now build everything. Windows installers, Debian packages, all CPU architectures, etc. We have never had this kind of coverage in PR checks, so I think this will help us.

[Eilon]

Okie dokie. Another thing I'm also fine with is doing reasonable experiments and evaluating the results. So, great, now it builds everything. Does anyone start complaining or think it's unreasonable in practice?

[pakrym]

I don't think anyone runs full build except people that need to test installers/sharedfx builds. And when you need to test those it's super painful to assemble the pieces.

I'm in favour of doing a full build considering we have good support for builds in subfolders.

[Eilon]

Great, this is the type of discussion I want to have!

[Eilon]

Suggestion:

Have build.cmd/.sh show a bright warning at the top saying it will build everything. EVERYTHING. But that you can build just a sub-section of the build by going to github.com/FOO (maybe using aka.ms) and running such-and-such.

[Eilon]

See also: #8025