Allow setting Release via an MSBuild property

[ericsampson]

Problem Statement

Right now the Release value is constructed via other properties (if not set as an env var), but there are situations where it would be easier to allow the user to explicitly stamp the desired Release as a SentryRelease MSBuild prop.

Solution Brainstorm

No response

[bitsandfoxes]

You can set the SentryRelease from code through the options. Does that not work for you?

[ericsampson]

You can set the SentryRelease from code through the options. Does that not work for you?

No, because that doesn't work nicely in our CI pipeline. I'd like to be able to pass in the SentryRelease as an msbuild property argument to our dotnet publish command.

Does that make sense? Thanks!

[bitsandfoxes]

I see your point. You could set a custom release attribute to be available at runtime.
It would look a little something like this

<Target Name="EnsureCustomRelease" BeforeTargets="BeforeBuild">
  <MakeDir Directories="Properties" Condition="!Exists('Properties')" />
  <WriteLinesToFile File="Properties\CustomReleaseInfo.cs" Lines="using System.Reflection%3b" Overwrite="true" />
  <WriteLinesToFile File="Properties\CustomReleaseInfo.cs" Lines="[assembly: AssemblyMetadata(&quot;CustomRelease&quot;, &quot;$(CustomRelease)&quot;)]" Overwrite="false" />
</Target>

That can be retrieved like so

var assembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
var customReleaseAttribute = assembly
    .GetCustomAttributes<AssemblyMetadataAttribute>()
    .FirstOrDefault(a => a.Key == "CustomRelease")
    ?.Value;

And you can set it via commandline dotnet publish -p:CustomRelease=1.0.0.
Would that unblock you?

[jamescrosswell]

This seems very similar to:

• of Use Sentry CLI to create release during build #2142

Is there anything we're suggesting in this issue that isn't already covered in the issue above?

[ericsampson]

@jamescrosswell I wasn't sure if the issue that you linked to included adding a new MSBuild property for SentryRelease.
If so, maybe we could update that issue's "spec" to call that out, and then this issue could be closed?

[bitsandfoxes]

Added this here to keep track of it. Thanks @ericsampson for all the valuable input! It's much appreciated.

[ericsampson]

thank you @bitsandfoxes <3