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How to build

These instructions focus on building from the command line, which includes compilation, test execution and packaging. This is the simplest way to build. It also replicates the build on the Continuous Integration (CI) build server and is the best indicator of whether a pull request will build. It's possible to build and test in various IDEs as well, but these may not perfectly replicate the official builds.

Supported frameworks and prerequisites

FakeItEasy can be built and tested on Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems with a few differences between the OSes.

The build requires that a few pieces of software be installed on the host computer. We're somewhat aggressive about adopting new language features and the like, so rather than specifying exactly which versions are required, we'll tend toward "latest" or "at least" forms of guidance. If it seems you have an incompatible version of the software, prefer to upgrade rather than downgrade.

To build FakeItEasy at all, you must have

  • an up-to-date version of the .NET 10.0 SDK

FakeItEasy supports the following targets

Target Tested On Additional prerequisites Build Profile
.NET 10.0 .NET 10.0 net10.0
.NET 8.0 .NET 8.0 net8.0
.NET Framework 4.6.2 .NET Framework 4.7.2 Windows OS, .NET Framework 4.7.2 or higher, .NET Framework 4.6.2 targeting pack net462

The default build profile (called full) will build and test all targets that are supported on the active operating system, so will require all the additional prerequisites listed above.

Partial builds are also supported.

Building

Using a command prompt, navigate to your clone root folder and execute:

  • build.cmd on Windows
  • ./build.sh on Linux or macOS
  • ./build.ps1 on any OS, if PowerShell is installed

This executes the default build targets to produce artifacts for various target frameworks, depending on the selected build profile.

After the build has completed, the build artifacts will be located in artifacts.

Running specific build tasks

build.cmd, build.sh, and build.ps1 wrap a Bullseye targets project, so you can use all the usual command line arguments that you would use with Bullseye, e.g.:

  • View the full list of build targets with their dependencies:

    build.cmd -t

  • Run a specific target:

    build.cmd spec

  • Run multiple targets:

    build.cmd spec pack

  • Run a target without running its dependencies (might fail if the dependencies haven't been previously built):

    build.cmd -s spec

  • View the full list of options:

    build.cmd -?

(Depending on your operating system or preferred shell, replace build.cmd with ./build.sh or ./build.ps1.)

Alternative flow: building with Visual Studio

We've only tested building FakeItEasy from Visual Studio on Windows. It can be convenient, but is not official and does not provide the same assurance as a command-line build. The additional requirements are:

  1. Visual Studio 2022 (17.0 or later)
  2. Install the following components via the Visual Studio installer (in the "Individual components" tab):
  3. .NET Framework 4.7.2 targeting pack
  4. .NET Framework 4.6.2 targeting pack

Building only a subset of the supported target frameworks

FakeItEasy is built to target and be tested against multiple versions of .NET as listed under Supported frameworks and prerequisites above. In some cases, you may want to build only a subset of the frameworks. Perhaps you're unable to install a particular prerequisite, or you want to iterate quickly and so you want to try building a single framework for a while before finally testing with all frameworks.

To this end, FakeItEasy's build infrastructure has "build profiles", which makes it possible to build only a subset of the target frameworks. All the profiles listed above are available, including full, the default profile which builds all target frameworks supported on the current platform.

To activate a profile, create or update a FakeItEasy.user.props file at the root of the repository by running

build.cmd use-profile-<profile name>

For example:

build.cmd use-profile-net10.0

or

build.cmd use-profile-full

Note that Visual Studio will not reflect a change of build profile until you reload the solution. The command line build will reflect the change immediately.

Building the documentation

The CI workflow uses mkdocs to build the documentation. We use uv to manage mkdocs and other Python tools used for the documentation. To build the documentation, install uv.

After this, you can generate the docs by running

build.cmd docs

The documentation will be built in artifacts/docs and can be viewed directly in a web browser or served using a number of tools such as dotnet-serve or http.server.

Updating the documentation-building packages

The versions of the packages used to build the documentation are frozen using uv as well.

If you wish to update the packages used, edit pyproject.toml, specifying the dev-dependencies, and run

uv lock

from the root of the repository. After verifying the generated documentation, you can commit both pyproject.toml and uv.lock.