dotnet-watch prints invalid characters in Command Prompt

[justdmitry]

dotnet-watch prints unknown/non-ascii characters in log messages (red boxes on image).

Package used: Microsoft.DotNet.Watcher.Tools version 1.0.0-msbuild3-final

Environment: win10-x64, SDK 1.0.0-rc4-004771, console encoding utf-8 (green on image)

Possibly related with https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/2590

[natemcmaster]

Can confirm. This only appears in Command Prompt, which doesn't support ANSI color codes. To workaround, use basically any other shell, like PowerShell, ConEmu, etc.

[Eilon]

Will consider this for a 1.0.1 patch of this package.

[Eilon]

@natemcmaster is this bug meant for the patch or for dev (2.0.0-preview1)? For dev I see you merged the change in - that's good. But then this bug should move to the correct milestone, and I guess we need a new bug opened for 1.0.1?

[natemcmaster]

@Eilon I'm honestly confused about whether we have 1.0.1 planned or not. Feel free to move milestones/create duplicates as necessary to satisfy bookkeeping procedures.

[snerks]

Issue appears to exist in Nightly Build for Windows 7 (SP1) 64-bit.

Steps to reproduce:
Follow steps provided in the blog post written by @shanselman, to create a solution, containing a Class Library and a Unit Test library:
https://www.hanselman.com/blog/CommandLineUsingDotnetWatchTestForContinuousTestingWithNETCore10AndXUnitnet.aspx

Download ZIP of latest Windows X64 SDK:
https://dotnetcli.blob.core.windows.net/dotnet/Sdk/master/dotnet-dev-win-x64.latest.zip

Unzip the file. Place the contents of the unzipped dotnet-dev-win-x64.latest folder in the test project folder in the source code (i.e. the mytests folder, described in the blog post written by @shanselman) :

Open a command line (cmd.exe)
Navigate to the mytests folder

Type dotnet --version
2.0.0-preview1-005660

Type dotnet watch run

Expected result:
No garbled characters in console output

Actual result:
Garbled characters in console output
Note: I'm also seeing character-encoding issues in cmd.exe (and Powershell) but not Git-Bash.

It's possible I have missed some necessary steps.

[natemcmaster]

@snerks what is your version of Microsoft.DotNet.Watcher.Tools? (look for DotNetCliToolReference or dotnet watch --version)

[snerks]

dotnet watch --version
1.0.0-rtm-10308.

Do I need to take steps to update this to nightly version?

[natemcmaster]

Your steps may have updated dotnet-CLI, but you're still using dotnet-watch 1.0.0. To use nightly,

1. add a nuget.config file to our nightly feed. See the NuGet.config file in this repo for example
2. Change the version in csproj:

   <DotNetCliToolReference Include="Microsoft.DotNet.Watcher.Tools" Version="1.2.0-*" />

3. dotnet restore
4. dotnet watch --version to ensure it was installed.

See https://dotnet.myget.org/feed/aspnetcore-ci-dev/package/nuget/Microsoft.DotNet.Watcher.Tools.
FYI 1.2.0-* is a placeholder version that won't be released. This will be renamed to 2.0.0 soon.

[snerks]

Problem with dotnet restore now...

D:\DotNetCore.Nightly\dotnet-dev-win-x64.latest\testexample\mytests>dotnet resto
re

Restoring packages for D:\DotNetCore.Nightly\dotnet-dev-win-x64.latest\testexa
mple\mytests\mytests.csproj...
Restoring packages for D:\DotNetCore.Nightly\dotnet-dev-win-x64.latest\testexa
mple\mylibrary\mylibrary.csproj...
Restoring packages for D:\DotNetCore.Nightly\dotnet-dev-win-x64.latest\testexa
mple\mytests\mytests.csproj...
Generating MSBuild file D:\DotNetCore.Nightly\dotnet-dev-win-x64.latest\testex
ample\mylibrary\obj\mylibrary.csproj.nuget.g.props.
Writing lock file to disk. Path: D:\DotNetCore.Nightly\dotnet-dev-win-x64.late
st\testexample\mylibrary\obj\project.assets.json
Restore completed in 30.45 sec for D:\DotNetCore.Nightly\dotnet-dev-win-x64.la
test\testexample\mylibrary\mylibrary.csproj.
D:\DotNetCore.Nightly\dotnet-dev-win-x64.latest\testexample\mytests\sdk\2.0.0-pr
eview1-005660\NuGet.targets(97,5): error : Unable to resolve 'Microsoft.DotNet.W
atcher.Tools (>= 1.2.0)' for '.NETCoreApp,Version=v1.0'. [D:\DotNetCore.Nightly
dotnet-dev-win-x64.latest\testexample\mytests\mytests.csproj]
D:\DotNetCore.Nightly\dotnet-dev-win-x64.latest\testexample\mytests\sdk\2.0.0-pr
eview1-005660\NuGet.targets(97,5): error : Value cannot be null.\r [D:\DotNetCor
e.Nightly\dotnet-dev-win-x64.latest\testexample\mytests\mytests.csproj]
D:\DotNetCore.Nightly\dotnet-dev-win-x64.latest\testexample\mytests\sdk\2.0.0-pr
eview1-005660\NuGet.targets(97,5): error : Parameter name: path [D:\DotNetCore.N
ightly\dotnet-dev-win-x64.latest\testexample\mytests\mytests.csproj]

[natemcmaster]

@snerks this error looks like a NuGet bug. https://github.com/NuGet/Home is the right place for this. I'd recommend using dotnet-CLI 1.0.0 instead if you're simply trying to use a new version of dotnet-watch. The latest 1.2.0-* version of Microsoft.DotNet.Watcher.Tools doesn't need dotnet-CLI 2.0.0-preview1. Combining nightlies of dotnet CLI and NuGet and dotnet-watch is going to be unstable.

[snerks]

@natemcmaster - I've made progress on this.

To workaround the NuGet issue above, I downloaded the Nightly Microsoft.DotNet.Watcher.Tools NuGet package to disk from:
https://dotnet.myget.org/feed/aspnetcore-ci-dev/package/nuget/Microsoft.DotNet.Watcher.Tools/1.2.0-preview1-24137

I then added a Nuget Package source that points to my on-disk Nuget packages folder.

Finally, I added a reference to the exact version of Microsoft.DotNet.Watcher.Tools to my unit test project (mytests.csproj):

  <ItemGroup>
    <DotNetCliToolReference Include="Microsoft.DotNet.Watcher.Tools" Version="1.2.0-preview1-24137" />
  </ItemGroup>

Then, following the steps in the blog item by @shanselman, I now see the following:

1. No garbled characters - nice!
2. Colorisation - nicer!

cmd.exe:

Powershell:

FYI: Git Shell does not show colorisation - not sure if this is expected.

Thanks @natemcmaster for helping to resolve my issue and @shanselman for the blog post.