Bake

Bake is a convention based build tool that focuses on minimal to none effort to configure and setup. Ideally you should be able to run bake in any repository with minimal arguments and get the "expected" output or better. This however comes at the cost of conventions and how well Bake works on a project all depends on how many of the conventions that project follows.

Bake is the right tool for you if you

• ... don't want to have a complicated build setup and configuration
• ... just want to focus on the development part of your project
• ... want to have the "basics" covered during build and release
• ... just want a build, test and release process that works

Bake is NOT the right tool for you if you

• ... like having control of every part of the build and release process
• ... have a project with a lot of custom build and/or release steps

Features

• Artifacts are automatically created for relevant projects. Examples are NuGet packages, Windows/Linux single binaries for tools, containers for Dockerfile
• Release notes are parsed and added to all applicable artifacts
• Tests are automatically located and executed

Installing Bake

There is a few different ways to install Bake, choose one that best suites your needs.

• Download binary - Simply download a binary from the releases page that suites your platform and architecture
• Install .NET tool - If have the .NET SDK installed, you can install Bake as a .NET tool. dotnet tool install --global Bake --version [VERSION] NOTE: Be sure to always install a specific version to ensure that your builds does not suddenly change behavior when new features are introduced in new versions of Bake.

Usage

Here are some examples of typical arguments passed to Bake.

Basic test build

Here is the simple use case for using Bake on e.g. pull requests

bake run

Basic release build

Here is the simple example of running a release build that sends NuGet packages created during the release to the GitHub package store for the owner of the current repository.

bake run --convention=Release --destination="nuget>github,container>rasmus"

Recognized repository content

When Bake analyzes a repository, it first gathers gathers basic information regarding the environment its executed within.

• Git - Repository information like origin, branch name and commit hash are stored and used when creating e.g. release artifacts
• GitHub - If the repository origin originates from GitHub, the information is gathered and used to further enrich any release artifacts
• GitHub Action - When Bake is executed from within a GitHub action, it automatically recognizes the token and uses that when publishing artifacts and releases
• Release notes - Pull requests merged since latest release are summarized, similar grouped together, used as release notes. In addition, if the repository contains a RELEASE_NOTES.md file, the content as well as the version information is used to further enrich any release artifacts

After the initial environment information gathering is completed, Bake starts to scan the repository for files and structures it knows how to process.

• .NET - Directories that contain .NET projects are analyzed and the application/service is built, tested and optionally put in a non-root and readonly filesystem compatible container
• Docker - Directories that contain a Dockerfile will get the file built
• Go - Directories that contain Go projects are analyzed and the application/service is built, tested and optionally containerized
• Helm chart - Helm charts are linted and packaged
• MkDocs - MkDocs documentation sites are built and prepared as artifacts
• Python Flask - Directories containing a Python Flask app.py file, will be bundled into a container
• NodeJS - Directories containing a package.json file will get bundled into a container with the script in the main property used as entrypoint

Based on the selected convention (by providing e.g. --convention=Release) and the destinations for artifacts, Bake pushes/uploads/creates the built artifacts to their configured destinations.

Examples of sending artifacts to their destinations

Here are some examples of common used arguments to Bake

• --destination=
  • Container
    • container>{username}, e.g. simply container>rasmus - Will mark the destination as Docker Hub with that username
    • container>github - Send containers to the GitHub package repository for at owner/organization of the git repository
    • container>registry.local:5000 - Send containers to a specific container registry
  • Helm
    • helm-chart>octopus@http://octopus.local/ - Sends Helm charts to the built-in repository in Octopus Deploy. Bake looks for the API-key in an environment variable named OCTOPUS_DEPLOY_APIKEY
    • helm-chart>chart-museum@http://chart-museum.local/ - Sends Helm charts to an instance of ChartMuseum
  • NuGet
    • nuget - An unnamed destination will send NuGet packages to the central NuGet repository at nuget.org. Bake will look for an API in an environment variable named NUGET_APIKEY
    • nuget>github - Send NuGet packages to the specific need with is owned by the owner of the repository of the current repository. Bake will automatically setup the API key for the current build using the GITHUB_TOKEN (automatically provided in GitHub actions), thus no additional configuration is required
    • nuget>http://nuget.local/v3/index.json - Send NuGet packages to the feed specified by the URL. Bake will look for the API key in an environment variable named bake_credentials_nuget_{hostname}_apikey, in which {hostname} is the hostname of the URL with invalid characters removed
  • Release
    • release>github - Creates release on GitHub within the current GitHub repository with the release notes and any important artifacts neatly bundled together in ZIP files with any README.md, LICENSE and RELEASE_NOTES.md in ZIP files found in the root of the repository

License

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MIT License Copyright (c) 2021-2025 Rasmus Mikkelsen Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.