Announcement: The dotnet-fake package and CliToolReference (Paket clitool) is deprecated

[matthid]

Description

Given that this way of distributing .NET tools is phased out by Microsoft itself (see dotnet/announcements#107) that announcement shouldn't surprise anyone.
Additionally, we have been hit by the design flaws of this approach multiple times, see #2097 and #2447. Debugging and fixing these issues is incredibly time-consuming and frustrating.

Therefore we will no longer push updates to the dotnet-fake package. In the future we might additionally use this package name to publish the standalone tool (today: fake-cli), but as usual here in FAKE, we give people enough time to adapt.

For quite a while the documentation already stated:

* (No longer recommended) Use it as a dotnet tool (legacy): Add `<DotNetCliToolReference Include="dotnet-fake" Version="5.*" />` to your dependencies and run `dotnet fake ...` instead of `fake ...`, see [this example](https://github.com/FakeBuild/fake-bootstrap/blob/master/dotnet-fake.csproj)

* (No longer recommended) Bootstrap via paket `clitool` (legacy), this is basically the same as `DotNetCliToolReference` but managed via paket. See the [`paket_clitool`](https://github.com/FakeBuild/fake-bootstrap/tree/paket_clitool) branch of `fake-bootstrap` in particular the [build.proj](https://github.com/FakeBuild/fake-bootstrap/blob/paket_clitool/build.proj) file.

Alternatives

We still have all the alternatives:

• Use dotnet SDK v3 and local (preferred - dotnet tool install fake-cli) or global (dotnet tool install fake-cli -g) tools
• Use global tools if you still are on v2 (dotnet tool install -g fake-cli) - Keep in mind that Microsoft support for .NET SDK v2 has already ended
• Download from github release page
• Install via chocolatey

See https://fake.build/fake-gettingstarted.html#Install-FAKE

Next steps

• Beginning today the documentation for dotnet-fake will be removed.
  This includes the samples from https://github.com/FakeBuild/fake-bootstrap
• Beginning today the package dotnet-fake will no longer be updated (the broken 5.19.0 release has been unlisted). It was already marked obsolete when dotnet-fake clitoolreference 5.19 Does not run :( #2447 was reported.
• Starting with 5.19.1 the fake template will no longer offer to create new projects with the dotnet-fake package.

[isaacabraham]

@matthid just to clarify, although I know that local tools are the way forward, are you saying that installing fake-cli as a global tool is no longer supported by Microsoft - where's this?

[matthid]

@isaacabraham No, only dotnet-fake is obsolete and no longer supported. Can you show where I have to edit my post to clarify? (maybe my English failed somewhere?)

[isaacabraham]

In the alternatives bit:

Use global tools if you still are on v2 - Keep in mind that Microsoft support has already ended (dotnet tool install -g fake-cli)

I read that as saying fake-cli as a global tool is not supported.

[matthid]

Ah ok I wanted to express that the support for v2 version of the SDK has ended, so there is no reason to stay on v2. And in v3 you can use local tools, which are recommended.
Any idea how to improve that sentence?

[matthid]

I edited it a bit.

[isaacabraham]

maybe just make it clear in the first line that you can use global tools as well although local is preferred e.g.

Use dotnet SDK v3 and local (preferred - dotnet tool install fake-cli) or global (dotnet tool install fake-cli -g) tools

[github-actions]

There has not been any activity in this issue for the last 3 months so it will be closed in 14 days if there is no activity.