ExtendCli

What is ExtendCli?

CAST Extend local server and CAST Extend Offline (in v. ≥ 1.1.0) are delivered "empty" without any preconfigured extensions - you will therefore need to populate them with extensions before you can use them. In addition, you may want to update CAST Extend local server/Offline to add new extensions or to include more recent releases of extensions. The ExtendCli tool is designed to perform this job and will allow the integration of the following (see Contributor types for more information about the types of extensions that are available):

• Official Product extensions
• User Community and Labs extensions

What's new

See ExtendCli - Release Notes for more information.

Prerequisites

To use ExtendCli, the following is required:

Supported Operating Systems

Operating System	Supported	Supported by reference
Microsoft Windows 8 64-bit
Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-bit
Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 64-bit (Standard edition)
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 64-bit (Standard edition)
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 64-bit (Standard edition)
Microsoft Windows Server 2016

Using ExtendCli

ExtendCli is provided as an executable (ExtendCli.exe) and must be used in command line mode. To do so, either:

• open a command prompt, and run the tool from where the downloaded tool has been unzipped
• create a re-usable batch script file

The required command line is as follows:

ExtendCli.exe [command][options]

Available commands

• bundle
• config
• download
• install (available in ≥ 1.1.0-funcrel)
• uninstall (available in ≥ 1.1.0-funcrel)

bundle

Technically, a bundle is a .json file in which information about the required extensions, any dependencies and other selection options are stored. The default value of "bundle" is default.json. You can create as many "bundles" as necessary. Available options are listed below:

config

The config command configures the parameters to allow the tool to connect to CAST Extend over the internet to fetch the required extensions (extensions) for the bundle:

ExtendCli.exe config set proxy <protocol://[user:password@]host[:port]>]

download

This option allows you to download an extension in .nupkg format:

ExtendCli.exe download [options] <extension id>

install

This option allows you to download an extension from CAST Extend and store it on the local machine in %PROGRAMDATA%\CAST\CAST\Extensions (or an alternative location if you have modified the CAST_PLUGINS_ROOT_PATH option in the CastGlobalSettings.ini file):

uninstall

Extension com.castsoftware.test version : 1.2.0-funcrel is not present on this machine,
and some schemas are using it. Please use ExtensionDownloader to download it and rerun Servman.

Usage examples

Set the CAST Extend (online) connection properties

Set the api key:

extendCli.exe config set api-key w9876xyz-d999-32ii-9fb0-0123cde45

Set the CAST Extend URL:

ExtendCli.exe config set extend-url "Your URL"

Define the extensions to package

Add one extension

The extension and any dependencies will be added to the list of extensions in the bundle with the following command:

extendCli.exe bundle add com.castsoftware.typescript

You can also use certain [options] as follows:

ExtendCli.exe bundle add com.castsoftware.typescript [options]

These options can be cumulative, for instance to download the absolute latest release (including alpha/beta) or the latest funcrel release or the latest LTS, use the following:

extendCli.exe bundle add com.castsoftware.typescript -a -f -l

To download the absolute latest release (including alpha/beta) or the latest LTS, use the following:

extendCli.exe bundle add com.castsoftware.typescript -a -l

E.g.:

Add extensions from predefined bundles

The "add template" command allows you to add extensions to your bundle that belong to a specific predefined bundle (predefined in CAST Extend (online)). The following command will add template number 14 to the bundle:

ExtendCli.exe bundle template add 14

The following commands will add all "product", "user community" and "labs" extensions:

ExtendCli.exe bundle template add product
ExtendCli.exe bundle template add community
ExtendCli.exe bundle template add labs

Save the bundle

Once you have defined the content of your bundle using the bundle add or template add commands, you can save it to a .json file, so that you can use the same bundle in the future:

Generate the package

When you generate the package, it will create the .extarchive file <last package name|default package name>.extarchive which can then be uploaded into your CAST Extend local server/Offline instance. You must define a folder where the archive file will be placed and the folder must exist already:

ExtendCli.exe bundle pack -o "C:\PRODUCT\Extend Offline\My package"

Navigate to the folder you have defined as output (in the above example the path is C:\PRODUCT\Extend Offline\My package) - it will contain the generated .extarchive file that you can upload into your CAST Extend local server/Offline instance by following the steps described in Upload the bundle to CAST Extend local server or Upload the bundle to CAST Extend Offline: