Consider adding setting a 'project directory' environment variable in dotnet-run

It looks like some of the ASP.NET-specific stuff used to support an ASPNET_APPLICATIONBASE environment variable in order to allow a web application to automatically determine its ‘base path’ correctly whether it was running from the context of a project with dotnet-run (variable set) or from the context of a set of published outputs (no variable set.) It seems that the Visual Studio tooling sets this variable since some point in the past, at least to support RC1 projects.

I don’t know whether this kind of situation will really apply to anything other than ASP.NET web applications, at least in the overwhelming majority of cases, but I feel like dotnet-run should be responsible for setting one or more environment variables like DOTNET_PROJECTDIRECTORY that running applications could use to be context-aware.

Related:

https://github.com/dotnet/cli/pull/1382 https://github.com/aspnet/Hosting/issues/651

[dasMulli]

Note that you can add this to your csproj file inside a <PropertyGroup> to force dotnet run to use the project’s directory:

<RunWorkingDirectory>$(MSBuildThisFileDirectory)</RunWorkingDirectory>

Setting RunWorkingDirectory as environment variable will also make MSBuild pick it up.

[saikatguha]

I have the same problem. I am trying to dotnet run -p ./path/to/my/project

In main, I have

new WebHostBuilder()
.UseKestrel()
.UseContentRoot(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory())

and then in Startup I have

new ConfigurationBuilder()
.SetBasePath(env.ContentRootPath)
.AddUserSecrets()

This results in:

Unhandled Exception: System.InvalidOperationException: Unable to locate a project.json at '{CurrentDirectory}'.
   at Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.UserSecrets.PathHelper.GetSecretsPath(IFileProvider provider)

Since dotnet run -p doesn’t change the current working directory, the base path point to current and not to ./path/to/my/project. And AddUserSecrets is expecting to find a project.json at the basepath and failing to do so.