Automatically cleanup old artifacts of file-based apps #49666

jjonescz · 2025-07-07T14:29:00Z

Resolves #48250.

Copilot

Pull Request Overview

Adds support for automatically cleaning up stale file-based app build artifacts and exposes a new hidden clean-file-based-app-artifacts command.

Introduce and wire up a new clean-file-based-app-artifacts command in the CLI parser
Implement automatic cleanup logic in VirtualProjectBuildingCommand and a standalone CleanFileBasedAppArtifactsCommand
Add resource strings, translations, and documentation for the new command and behavior

Reviewed Changes

Copilot reviewed 22 out of 22 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
src/Cli/dotnet/Parser.cs	Register new `clean-file-based-app-artifacts` command
src/Cli/dotnet/Commands/Clean/FileBasedAppArtifacts/CleanFileBasedAppArtifactsCommandParser.cs	Define parser and options for the cleanup command
src/Cli/dotnet/Commands/Clean/FileBasedAppArtifacts/CleanFileBasedAppArtifactsCommand.cs	Implement the cleanup operation, metadata tracking, and automatic background launch
src/Cli/dotnet/Commands/Run/VirtualProjectBuildingCommand.cs	Add artifact‐usage touch, cleanup trigger, and refactor temp‐path helpers
src/Cli/dotnet/Commands/Run/RunCommand.cs	Touch artifacts folder in `dotnet run` entry-point
src/Cli/dotnet/Commands/Run/Api/RunApiCommand.cs	Touch artifacts folder in API run scenario
src/Cli/dotnet/Commands/Clean/CleanCommand.cs	Rename `NoBuildMarkers` to `NoWriteBuildMarkers` for consistency
src/Cli/dotnet/Commands/CliCommandStrings.resx	Add .NET resource entries for new cleanup command
src/Cli/dotnet/Commands/xlf/*	Add translation placeholders for new cleanup strings
documentation/general/dotnet-run-file.md	Document automatic cleanup cadence, toggle, and manual command

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (1)

src/Cli/dotnet/Parser.cs:71

Consider adding automated tests for the new clean-file-based-app-artifacts command and its automatic cleanup trigger to ensure the behavior remains correct over time.

        CleanFileBasedAppArtifactsCommandParser.GetCommand(),

src/Cli/dotnet/Commands/Clean/FileBasedAppArtifacts/CleanFileBasedAppArtifactsCommand.cs

src/Cli/dotnet/Commands/xlf/CliCommandStrings.zh-Hant.xlf

Co-authored-by: Copilot <[email protected]>

DamianEdwards · 2025-07-07T18:36:01Z

documentation/general/dotnet-run-file.md

 They are not cleaned immediately because they can be re-used on subsequent runs for better performance.
+The automatic cleanup can be disabled by environment variable `DOTNET_CLI_DISABLE_FILE_BASED_APP_ARTIFACTS_AUTOMATIC_CLEANUP=true`,
+but other parameters of the automatic cleanup are currently not configurable.
+The same cleanup can be performed manually via command `dotnet clean-file-based-app-artifacts`.


Thoughts on making this an option (or sub-command?) to the existing dotnet clean command instead? e.g. dotnet clean --file-based-app-artifacts or dotnet clean caches or some such @baronfel

dotnet clean --file-based-apps or clean-file-based-apps seems good to me. The word artifacts in the context of clean seems redundant.

So does dotnet clean --file-based-apps sound good to everyone before I go and change to that?

FWIW, I chose to make this a separate command (currently hidden from dotnet --help) because it's fundamentally different from dotnet clean which uses MSBuild /t:Clean whereas dotnet clean-file-based-app-artifacts implements its own logic which also means no flags of the normal dotnet clean apply. That being said, I'm okay with having this as a flag for dotnet clean, but I think we might need to check there are no other flags passed.

As for dropping "artifacts" from the command name, dotnet clean-file-based-apps sounds a bit like your file-based apps will be deleted (not just their artifacts) but on the other hand I also dislike how unwieldy my current command name is.

I'd like to hear from @baronfel. I'm curious whether we could make this a sub-command instead, so something like dotnet clean file-based-apps. We could still make it hidden but more importantly we'd need to ensure it's not breaking in any way.

I'd very much love a hidden subcommand. It's kinda a gnarly name to have a dedicated option flag, and it's really an implementation detail that we just don't have a super-great home for.

The problem with a subcommand is that it also inherits all arguments and options from the parent command. But perhaps that's acceptable given it's a hidden subcommand.

MiYanni

Changes look good. Up to the group how this is exposed, as either a hidden command or hidden option to clean or whichever works for y'all.

jjonescz · 2025-07-14T09:06:42Z

@chsienki or @jaredpar for a review, thanks

jaredpar · 2025-07-14T15:32:50Z

documentation/general/dotnet-run-file.md

+The automatic cleanup can be disabled by environment variable `DOTNET_CLI_DISABLE_FILE_BASED_APP_ARTIFACTS_AUTOMATIC_CLEANUP=true`,
+but other parameters of the automatic cleanup are currently not configurable.
+The same cleanup can be performed manually via command `dotnet clean-file-based-app-artifacts`.


@baronfel please take a look at these new entry point / env names.

We've already discussed the subcommand in another thread above, but yeah, please also take a look at the env var name DOTNET_CLI_DISABLE_FILE_BASED_APP_ARTIFACTS_AUTOMATIC_CLEANUP.

jaredpar · 2025-07-14T15:43:36Z

src/Cli/dotnet/Commands/Clean/FileBasedAppArtifacts/CleanFileBasedAppArtifactsCommand.cs

+
+        if (!directory.Exists)
+        {
+            Reporter.Error.WriteLine(string.Format(CliCommandStrings.CleanFileBasedAppArtifactsDirectoryNotFound, directory.FullName).Yellow());


Why report a warning here? Won't that mean that installing the CLI then running the command produces a warning? I intuitively expect it would just return nothing because there was nothing to delete and it successfully deleted nothing 😄

My thinking is that if the directory doesn't exist, something might be wrong (e.g., you have some env var set which changes where the directory points to) and it might be good to alert the user.

jaredpar · 2025-07-14T15:45:08Z

src/Cli/dotnet/Commands/Clean/FileBasedAppArtifacts/CleanFileBasedAppArtifactsCommand.cs

+        }
+
+        // Open and lock the metadata file to ensure we are the only automatic cleanup process.
+        return GetMetadataFile().Open(FileMode.Create, FileAccess.ReadWrite, FileShare.None);


In the case of concurrent calls to this method there will be an exception generated here. How does that manifest in terms of user experience?

This is only called during the automatic cleanup which runs in the background and its output is not visible anywhere, so the exception won't be seen.

jjonescz added 6 commits July 7, 2025 14:23

Add command for removing file-based app artifacts

78a816e

Automatically cleanup if necessary

18dc1ed

Mark artifacts used even if not building

715bbbc

Add environment variable to disable auto cleanup

ac0be84

Update spec

0ddedfb

Clarify properties controlling reading/writing of build markers

cc6fcd1

jjonescz added the Area-run-file Items related to the "dotnet run <file>" effort label Jul 7, 2025

build-analysis bot mentioned this pull request Jul 7, 2025

Containers integration tests are flaky when the network fails to load the registry #49502

Open

jjonescz marked this pull request as ready for review July 7, 2025 16:48

jjonescz requested review from Copilot and a team July 7, 2025 16:48

Copilot AI reviewed Jul 7, 2025

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src/Cli/dotnet/Commands/Clean/FileBasedAppArtifacts/CleanFileBasedAppArtifactsCommand.cs Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

src/Cli/dotnet/Commands/xlf/CliCommandStrings.zh-Hant.xlf Show resolved Hide resolved

Fix string format

8bae948

Co-authored-by: Copilot <[email protected]>

DamianEdwards reviewed Jul 7, 2025

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jjonescz added 2 commits July 10, 2025 11:50

Use a sub-command

7e77262

Mark folder as used in more cases

1baabde

jjonescz mentioned this pull request Jul 10, 2025

Make dotnet project convert interactive #49660

Merged

Update snapshots

d43c35b

RikkiGibson approved these changes Jul 10, 2025

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MiYanni approved these changes Jul 10, 2025

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jjonescz requested review from jaredpar and chsienki July 11, 2025 09:56

jaredpar reviewed Jul 14, 2025

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jjonescz requested a review from jaredpar July 15, 2025 07:41

jaredpar approved these changes Jul 15, 2025

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Automatically cleanup old artifacts of file-based apps #49666

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Pull Request Overview

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jjonescz commented Jul 14, 2025 •

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jjonescz Jul 14, 2025 •

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