dotnet format (latest 8) intermittently fails with "Unable to locate dotnet CLI. Ensure that it is on the PATH."

[christophwille]

Initially opened over at dotnet/format#2218 (forgot that it was moved...)

This started happening to our Github builds this weekend:

We never had any issues whatsoever, so initially we were looking at the newly installed net90, but then found microsoft/azure-pipelines-tasks#19162 (and by extension dotnet/format#2000). However, when locking to the latest version in https://github.com/icsharpcode/ILSpy/pull/3338/files we still see "Unable to locate dotnet CLI. Ensure that it is on the PATH.".

So it wasn't the old-ish version of dotnet-format that tripped us up but it happens also with the latest 8-series one. Any ideas/pointers where to start looking next? This flakiness is annoying (but not a showstopper atm).

[stevejgordon]

We are also seeing this occur randomly in GitHub actions.

[jeremy-visionaid]

Also seeing this on GitHub actions

[stevejgordon]

We've also started to see this on a second repository. It's consistently failing on the Windows GitHub worker but seems fine on Linux.

[christophwille]

It seems adding env vars, especially DOTNET_ROOT helped: https://github.com/icsharpcode/ILSpy/blob/e28d04810ac5ea3235c6b3b8ea5795bf42bbf0a5/.github/workflows/build-ilspy.yml#L29-L35

[hongbo-miao]

Thanks @christophwille !

In my case, DOTNET_INSTALL_DIR: ${{ runner.temp }}/.dotnet instead of DOTNET_ROOT: ${{ runner.temp }}/.dotnet helps as a workaround solution ☺️

So it would be like

      - name: Set up .NET Core
        uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v4.1.0
        with:
          global-json-file: path/to/global.json
        env:
          DOTNET_INSTALL_DIR: ${{ runner.temp }}/.dotnet

---

And it is interesting to see in the downstream step log, DOTNET_ROOT now refers to D:\a\_temp\.dotnet instead of C:\Program Files\dotnet which sometimes gives me error "Unable to locate dotnet CLI. Ensure that it is on the PATH".

dotnet format my.sln --verify-no-changes
  shell: C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7\pwsh.EXE -command ". '{0}'"
  env:
    NUGET: C:\hostedtoolcache\windows\nuget.exe\6.12.1\x6[4](https://github.com/hongbo-miao/hongbomiao.com/actions/runs/12333172993/job/34421902814?pr=21563#step:6:4)/nuget.exe
    DOTNET_ROOT: D:\a\_temp\.dotnet