Reference | Command Line

Command-line interface (CLI)

Script arguments allow to specify execution options, list of targets, logging options and others from command line. According to fsi.exe -- arguments denotes the start of script arguments so in the most common case you will use it as:

  fsi build.fsx -- clean build deploy

where "clean" "build" and "deploy" are target names.

Parallel tasks execution vs sequential

In the command above the targets will be run one-by-one -- script will wait for completion of the task before starting the next one. Use command-separated list target1;target2;..targetN to execute the targets simultaneously (in parallel).

The number of task that can run simultaneously is specified by -t parameter:

  fsi build.fsx -- -t 2 build-release;build-debug;deploy

Default value (if one was not specified in command line) is the number of processors.

Obviously, if task1 and task2 are started in parallel while task2 depends on task1, they will run sequentially. Parallel execution is only reasonable for independent tasks.

Analyzing dependencies

There several options to analyze current state of the artifacts and source files. --dryrun causes xake to dump the dependencies graph, obtained and stored to build database dring previous run.

  fsi build.fsx -- build --dryrun

Only those dependencies, that are changed and will trigger the build are listed:

XAKE build tool 0.9.3.274

[CMD] Running (dry) targets [["build"]]
[CMD] Rebuild "build" (~5ms)
[CMD]   Rebuild "C:\projects\Xake\bin/Xake.Core.dll" (~1749ms)
[CMD]     Rebuild "C:\projects\Xake\bin\FSharp.Core.dll" (~56ms)
[CMD]   Rebuild "C:\projects\Xake\bin/XakeLibTests.dll" (~827ms)
[CMD]     Rebuild "C:\projects\Xake\bin\nunit.framework.dll" (~23ms)
[MSG]

        Build will be completed (estimate) in 2.637s

.xake build database

Dependencies graph and current state of each artifact are recorded in .xake file in the build root folder. The database is used to skip rebuilding the targets which source code (and anything else it depends on) is not changed.

Use --dump option will dump all recorded dependencies for particular targets:

fsi build.fsx -- build --dump

Drop this file whenever build script is changed and you observe any glitches.

Progress indication

By default under Windows platform xake will display progress info in the title bar of console window. Use -p option to output progress info to console output.

Other parameters

• -h -- displays help screen
• -t -- use simultaneous processes to execute the build tasks. * Default value is the number of processors
• -r -- override the root path. All the targets and filesets are resolved relatively to this path. Default is current directory
• -ll -- console log level (Silent | Quiet | Normal | Loud | Chatty | Diag)
• -fl -- specifies the name of the log file
• -fll -- specifies the logging level to a log file
• -d = -- defines a script variable value
• --dryrun - prints dependency graph and estimates the build duration
• --dump - prints dependency graph based on the last run
• --progress, -p - display progress indicator
• -nologo -- remove logo string