Unable to update global tool to the latest prerelease version

I tried updating to the latest prerelease version of the dotnet-httprepl tool, but there doesn’t appear to be a way to do so using the update command:

C:\>dotnet tool update -g --add-source https://dotnet.myget.org/F/dotnet-core/api/v3/index.json dotnet-httprepl
error NU1103: Unable to find a stable package dotnet-httprepl with version
error NU1103:   - Found 9 version(s) in dotnet-core [ Nearest version: 2.2.0-preview3-35304 ]
error NU1103:   - Found 1 version(s) in nuget.org [ Nearest version: 2.2.0-preview2-35157 ]
error NU1103:   - Found 0 version(s) in Microsoft Visual Studio Offline Packages
error NU1103:   - Found 0 version(s) in C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\NuGetFallbackFolder
error NU1103:   - Found 0 version(s) in blazor-dev
Tool 'dotnet-httprepl' failed to update due to the following:
The tool package could not be restored.
Tool 'dotnet-httprepl' failed to install. This failure may have been caused by:

* You are attempting to install a preview release and did not use the --version option to specify the version.
* A package by this name was found, but it was not a .NET Core tool.
* The required NuGet feed cannot be accessed, perhaps because of an Internet connection problem.
* You mistyped the name of the tool.

Notice that the message recommends using the --version option, which doesn’t appear to be supported with update:

C:\>dotnet tool update -g --version 2.2.0-* --add-source https://dotnet.myget.org/F/dotnet-core/api/v3/index.json dotnet-httprepl
Unrecognized command or argument '2.2.0-*'
Unrecognized command or argument 'dotnet-httprepl'

[peterhuene]

I think dotnet tool update doesn’t support a --version option currently because there’s no wildcard that will get us the “latest version including prerelease” we can use for a PackageReference. If we had that, I would expect a --prerelease option for dotnet tool update rather than a --version option, since the intent of the tool is not to install a particular version or range, but rather update to latest known (with or without considering prerelease versions).

The bug here, however, is that the help text printed is for dotnet tool install and not dotnet tool update, which supports different options obviously. We should fix the error message because I don’t see tool update supporting --version.

Until we add support for a --prerelease option, the workaround for the scenario would have to be to uninstall the tool and reinstall the particular desired version.

[wli3]

fixed in https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/pull/19646