ctx/tools/roslyn-helper

ctx-roslyn-helper

C# subprocess invoked by ctx csharp commands. Loads .NET solutions with Roslyn and answers JSON-RPC queries over stdin/stdout.

Protocol

One JSON object per line, UTF-8 without BOM.

Request: {"id": 1, "method": "ping", "params": {}} Success: {"id": 1, "result": {...}} Error: {"id": 1, "error": {"code": "E_NOT_FOUND", "message": "..."}}

Methods

Method	Params	Description
ping	{}	Health check, returns version
loadSolution	{"path": "C:\\...\\x.sln"}	Load solution into workspace
projectSummary	{}	Summary of loaded solution
shutdown	{}	Exit cleanly (no response written)

Build

Requires: .NET 8+ SDK.

dotnet build src/RoslynHelper -c Release

Publish

dotnet publish src/RoslynHelper -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained false -o publish/

Output: publish/ctx-roslyn-helper.exe

Manual test

cd publish
./ctx-roslyn-helper.exe

Then type line by line:

{"id": 1, "method": "ping", "params": {}}
{"id": 2, "method": "loadSolution", "params": {"path": "C:\\path\\to\\My.sln"}}
{"id": 3, "method": "projectSummary", "params": {}}
{"id": 99, "method": "shutdown", "params": {}}

Notes

• Does NOT need to be self-contained. Requires .NET 8+ runtime on the target machine. Users of ctx csharp are .NET developers — the runtime is already there.
• MSBuild warnings logged to stderr are informational (missing SDK targets, etc.). Only WorkspaceFailed events with Failure kind indicate real problems.
• The helper is spawned once per ctx invocation and kept alive for all queries in that session. ctx Go manages the subprocess lifecycle.