There have been a few projects, although not many, which I've been involved in, where generating GUIDs/UUIDs has been important. For that, I used to use online-tools like https://guidgenerator.com, but when I switched machines, the autocomplete in my browser might have lost the link to that tool.

Minimally for this reason, and mostly for fun, I decided to write a .NET Core Global Tool which quickly generates one or multiple GUIDs/UUIDs, in whatever format could be needed.

Installation

Download the .NET Core SDK 2.1 or later. The install the dotnet-guid .NET Global Tool, using the command-line:

dotnet tool install -g dotnet-guid

Usage

Usage: guid [arguments] [options]

Arguments:
  Count         Defines how may GUIDs/UUIDs to generate. Defaults to 1.

Options:
  -?|-h|--help  Show help information
  -n            Formatted as 32 digits:
                00000000000000000000000000000000
  -d            Formatted as 32 digits separated by hyphens:
                00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
  -b            Formatted as 32 digits separated by hyphens, enclosed in braces:
                {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
  -p            Formatted as 32 digits separated by hyphens, enclosed in parentheses:
                (00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000)
  -x            Formatted as four hexadecimal values enclosed in braces,
                where the fourth value is a subset of eight hexadecimal values that is also enclosed in braces:
                {0x00000000,0x0000,0x0000,{0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00}}
  -e            Defines if the GUIDs/UUIDs should be empty, using zero-values only.
  -u            Defines if the GUIDs/UUIDs generated should be upper-cased letters.

Examples

To get a single GUID/UUID, simply type:

guid

To get 3 random GUIDs/UUIDs, with letters in upper-case, formatted with brackets:

guid 3 -b -u

You can find the source-code on GitHub, the package on Nuget and the latest builds on MyGet.

You can find a great list of more .NET Core Global Tools on GitHub, maintained by Nate McMaster.

We developers like to think of developing software as an exact science, but sometimes, you just need to wipe your source-files to solve some kinds of problems.

For .NET-developers, there are many issues on Stackoverflow which are solved by just deleting your bin and obj-folders. For people using Node.js, probably just as many answers contains the step of removing your node_modules-folder.

Those are some of the reasons why I created dotnet-cleanup, which is a .NET Core Global Tool for cleaning up solution, project or folder. This was made easy by following Nate McMaster's post on getting started with creating a .NET Core global tool package.

Deleted files and folders are first moved to a temporary folder before deletion, so you can continue working with your projects, while the tool keeps cleaning up in background.

Installation

Download the .NET Core SDK 2.1 or later. The install the dotnet-cleanup .NET Global Tool, using the command-line:

dotnet tool install -g dotnet-cleanup

Usage

Usage: cleanup [arguments] [options]

Arguments:
  PATH                  Path to the solution-file, project-file or folder to clean. Defaults to current working directory.

Options:
  -p|--paths            Defines the paths to clean. Defaults to 'bin', 'obj' and 'node_modules'.
  -y|--confirm-cleanup  Confirm prompt for file cleanup automatically.
  -nd|--no-delete       Defines if files should be deleted, after confirmation.
  -nm|--no-move         Defines if files should be moved before deletion, after confirmation.
  -t|--temp-path        Directory in which the deleted items should be moved to before being cleaned up. Defaults to system Temp-folder.
  -v|--verbosity        Sets the verbosity level of the command. Allowed levels are Minimal, Normal, Detailed and Debug.
  -?|-h|--help          Show help information

The argument PATH can point to a specific .sln-file or a project-file (.csproj, .fsharp, .vbproj). If a .sln-file is specified, all its projects will be cleaned.

If it points to a folder, the folder will be scanned for a single solution-file and then for a single project-file. If multiple files are detected an error will be shown and you need to specify the file.

If not solution or project is found, the folder will be cleaned as a project.

Example

To cleanup a typical web-project, you can specify the paths to be cleaned in the projects like this:

cleanup -p "bin" -p "obj"  -p "artifacts" -p "npm_modules"

You can find the source-code on GitHub, the latest builds on MyGet and the package on Nuget.

You can find a great list of more .NET Core Global Tools on GitHub, maintained by Nate McMaster.