Manage Runtimes Using DNVM Install and Upgrade Commands

DNVM Install and Upgrade commands can be used to install a new version of the runtime or to upgrade an existing version to a newer version of the runtime.

dnvm install –arch <architecture name=""> –r<runtime name="">

dnvm install –arch x64 –r coreclr 1.0.0-rc1-update2

DNX - Using Commands option

In DNX environment we are using dnx run command to run the program from the command line. I have already authored a post on this and you refer that from here. 

In this post I am going to cover the custom command option avaliable in .NET core using which we can do named execution of our program. We can define commands in the project.json file in your project folder and is recognized by editors like Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code. The commands defined in the project folder is available in that project only. If you want you can have commands defined at a global level, then it is available for everthing that runs under a user profile. 

Sample program 

using System;
using static System.Console;
using System.Collections.Generic;
namespace DnxCoreSample.Commands
{
    public class Program
    {
        public void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var items = new List<string>() { "Red", "Blue", "White", "Green" };
            foreach (var item in items)
            {
                WriteLine($"Color : {item}");
            }
        }

        
    }
}

Let's see how can we configure that in project.json file

{
  "frameworks": {
    "dnx451": { },
    "dnxcore50": {
      "dependencies": {
        "System.Console": "4.0.0-beta-23516",
        "System.Collections": "4.0.11-beta-23516"
      }
    }
  },
  "commands": {
    "RunSample" : "dnxcommands"

  }
}

The dnx run Command

As we have seen in the earlier post, we can use the dnx run command to compile and immediately execute the program. To recap, when you execute the below command in the command prompt, it will execute the program which has an entry point defined in the current folder. 

dnx run

I have created a sample program  which outputs a message to the console.

using System;
using static System.Console;
namespace DnxCoreSample.Commands
{
 public class Program
    {
        public  void Main(string[] args)
        {
            WriteLine("Getting started with dnx commands");
			
        }
    }
}	

So if we try to execute the dnx run command, will get an error as shown below.

That's because we haven't created the configuration file yet, which is used by the DNX environment for managing the dependencies and other project settings. So let's create one with the needed dependencies and run the dnu restore command to download the packages. 

So after downloading, run the program using dnx run in the command prompt and will get the result as shown below.