Can I build multiple projects with dotnet build?

Question

Can I somehow build multiple projects with one root project.json file (or otherwise)? For example, one library, one test project, and one command line? If so, how?

Answer 1

I may be one year late in answering, but may be it is still useful for somebody who lands here after this.

dotnet build no longer uses project.json, instead uses *.csproj. And dotnet build can now take a directory name as an argument, and uses the *.csproj within that directory for the build. This being the case, the easiest way to build from a top-level-directory goes like this:

Assuming the structure of your projects is:

src
  |
  + -- proj1
  |
  + -- proj2
  |
  + -- proj3
  |
  .
  .

Just go to the top-level directory (src in this case), and type this:

Get-ChildItem -exclude ".vscode" | %{Write-Host -ForegroundColor DarkMagenta "Building $_..."; dotnet build $_;}

I normally use PowerShell within VSCode, and hence you see the -exclude ".vscode" and PowerShell commands Get-ChildItem (aliased also as simply 'dir') and Write-Host.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

If all of your projects are stored in a structure like this :

<root>/src/Project1
<root>/src/Project2

then you can use a single command with a globbing pattern to build all of the projects at once:

dotnet build src/**/project.json

From what I am aware of, you'll still need individual project.json files for each project though.