Problem with running GitVersion on Build Server through Cake

When running GitVersion using:

gitversion /output buildserver

the idea is that GitVersion will assert the semantic version of your git repository, and it will then create a number of Environment Variables, which can then be later used within your build script.

You can see GitVersion creating these environment variables in the log file here:

https://ci.appveyor.com/project/GaryEwanPark/resharperreports/build/0.3.0-PullRequest.16+7 (Build 28)#L169

Now, before I started using Cake, I used psake, and when executing GitVersion (using the buildserver flag) from my psake script, I was immediately able to consume the environment variables, as you can see here:

https://github.com/chocolatey/ChocolateyGUI/blob/develop/BuildScripts/default.ps1#L440

i.e. GitVersion is called here:

https://github.com/chocolatey/ChocolateyGUI/blob/develop/BuildScripts/default.ps1#L439

and the environment variables are immediately consumed. Now, this “magic” was made possible on AppVeyor thanks to some work that was done by @FeodorFitsner which allowed the psake (PowerShell) calling script to immediately “see” the environment variables created by GitVersion. i.e.

PowerShell -> GitVersion = works!

However, in the case of running GitVersion through Cake, we have:

PowerShell -> Cake -> GitVersion != works

So my question is, what needs to happen to allow this process to also work?

Is it a change to GitVersion? Is it a change to Cake? Is it a change to AppVeyor?

Is it not even possible?

There is a workaround, which is to call GitVersion twice. Once with the /output buildserver flag, which normalizing the Git Repository, and sets build number, etc, and once without that flag, to simply return the version number, but that feels like a bit of a hack.

There is also an open issue on GitVersion to also return the JSON result, when running with the buildserver flag, https://github.com/GitTools/GitVersion/issues/675, but not sure if this is going to get implemented or not.

Just wanted to put this out there to see what the thoughts were.

[JakeGinnivan]

The good news is that the next release of GitVersion will cache the version it calculates, so the second call will be almost instant.

[gep13]

This will be implemented here: https://github.com/cake-build/cake/issues/1128