3.3 KiB
Internals of build process
The purpose of this document is to explain build process internals with subtle nuances.
This document is not by any means complete.
The ultimate source of truth is the code in .\build.psm1
that's getting executed on the corresponding CI system.
This document assumes that you can successfully build PowerShell from sources for your platform.
Top directory
We are calling dotnet
tool build for $Top
directory
src\powershell-win-core
for CoreCLR on Windows.src\powershell-unix
for CoreCLR on Linux and macOS.src\powershell-win-full
for FullCLR builds (Windows only)
Dummy dependencies
We use dummy dependencies between projects to leverage dotnet
build functionality.
For example, src\powershell-win-core\powershell-win-core.csproj
has dependency on Microsoft.PowerShell.PSReadLine
,
but in reality, there is no build dependency.
Dummy dependencies allows us to build just $Top
folder, instead of building several folders.
Dummy dependencies rules
-
If assembly is part of FullCLR build, it should be listed as a dependency for FullCLR $Top folder (src\powershell-win-full)
-
If assembly is part of CoreCLR build, it should be listed as a dependency for $Top folder (src\powershell-unix or src\powershell-win-core)
Preliminary steps
ResGen
Until the .NET CLI dotnet-resgen
tool supports the generation of strongly typed classes,
we run our own tool C# ResGen tool.
While the Start-PSBuild
command runs this automatically via the Start-ResGen
function,
it does not require PowerShell.
The same command can be run manually:
cd src/ResGen
dotnet restore
dotnet run
Running the program does everything else:
- for each project, given a
resources
folder- creates a
gen
folder - for each
*.resx
file- fills in a strongly typed C# class
- writes it out to the corresponding
*.cs
file
- creates a
These files are not automatically updated on each build, as the project lacks the ability to detect changes. Thus, running it for every build would break incremental recompilation.
If you pull new commits and get an error about missing strings,
you likely need to delete the gen
folders and re-run the tool.
Type Catalog
As a work-around for the lack of GetAssemblies()
,
our custom assembly load context takes a pre-generated catalog of C# types
(for PowerShell type resolution).
Generating this catalog is a pre-build step that is run via Start-TypeGen
,
which Start-PSBuild
calls.
Again, however, PowerShell is not required.
The necessary steps can be run manually:
cd ../TypeCatalogGen
dotnet restore
dotnet run ../Microsoft.PowerShell.CoreCLR.AssemblyLoadContext/CorePsTypeCatalog.cs powershell.inc
The file powershell.inc
is generated by running a custom MSBuild target,
which can be found at build.sh
.
powershell.inc
contains the resolved paths to the DLLs of each dependency of PowerShell,
and is taken as input to the TypeCatalogGen
tool,
which generates a source file CorePsTypeCatalog.cs
for the Microsoft.PowerShell.CoreCLR.AssemblyLoadContext
project.
The error The name 'InitializeTypeCatalog' does not exist in the current context
indicates that the CorePsTypeCatalog.cs
source file does not exist,
so follow the steps to generate it.