Nuke Build declare a tool that is fetched as part of the build

Question

Most of the tools I use, are dotnet tools that are referenced from csproj file and automagically fetched by nuget. A few tools are old-school Framework tools, which should be copied into the tools directory before use. For the latter I have a GetTools Target.

My problem is declaring the Tool:

 [LocalExecutable("./tools/MyFrameworkTool.exe")] 
 readonly Tool FrameworkTool;

This throws the following assertion:

Assertion failed: File.Exists(C:\Jenkins\workspace\Job\./tools/MyFrameworkTool.exe)

And the FrameworkTool is null.

How can I make a 'late' declaration of the tool, when it has been fetched by the GetTools Target?

@Matthias dotnet framework (4.6.1) as opposed to dotnet core. Which cannot be installed with the 'dotnet tool install' command. — TheRoadrunner, Dec 19 '20 at 07:23
It's a self built tool that must access an MS Access database, and thus cannot be net core. We just copy it in from a network share. — TheRoadrunner, Dec 20 '20 at 11:57
You can’t use the attribute if the tool is not available at build start already. If you want to initialize the field in a target, you can use `ToolResolver`. — Matthias, Dec 26 '20 at 02:30

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 05 '21 at 09:01

For other developers in the same situation, I post the answer here.

Matthias suggestion to use ToolResolver was the key.

The initial (Restore) Target can copy the tool to the ./tools/MyCustomTool directory.

With the ToolResolver static class, one can declare it in the Target, where it is referenced:

Tool MyCustomTool = ToolResolver.GetLocalTool("./tools/MyCustomTool/MyCustomTool.exe");

MyCustomTool is now available to use inside this Target.

Nuke Build declare a tool that is fetched as part of the build

1 Answers1