Use cake build language in classes

I’d like to structure my build scripts into different classes. E.g one for default directory definitions. I noticed that I’m not able to use the cake build language there e.g.

public class DefaultDirectories
{   
    public static DirectoryPath WorkingCopyRoot = MakeAbsolute(Directory(".")) 
    public static DirectoryPath Binaries = WorkingCopyRoot.Combine(new DirectoryPath("bin"));
 ...
}

MakeAbsolute and Directory cannot be interpreted correctly by CAKE.

For now I created a workaround but that may be not possible for other cases

public class DefaultDirectories
{   
    public static DirectoryPath WorkingCopyRoot = new DirectoryPath(System.IO.Directory.GetCurrentDirectory());
    public static DirectoryPath Binaries = WorkingCopyRoot.Combine(new DirectoryPath("bin"));
    ...
}

Do I miss something or is that not intended to be done like that?

Another newbie question: How do you edit your build scripts, can this be done somehow in Visual Studio where compilation errors might be shown as under normal C# development?

[patriksvensson]

Alas, there are no plans of supporting Cake alias methods in classes. A workaround for your problem would be something like this:

public class DefaultDirectories
{
    public static DirectoryPath WorkingCopyRoot;
    public static DirectoryPath Binaries;

    public static void Initialize(ICakeContext c)
    {
      WorkingCopyRoot = c.MakeAbsolute(c.Directory("./"));
      Binaries = WorkingCopyRoot.Combine(new DirectoryPath("bin"));
    }
}

// Initialize default directories.
DefaultDirectories.Initialize(Context);

Task("DoMagic")
  .Does(() =>
{
  var temp = DefaultDirectories.WorkingCopyRoot.Combine("tmp");
  Information(temp.FullPath);
});

RunTarget("DoMagic");

[Sam13]

That’s fine, didn’t know how to adress the context…