Intent.SoftwareFactory.CLI.nightly 4.5.999-nightly.2025-06-20-0105

Software Factory CLI

A CLI (command line interface) version of the Intent Architect Software Factory.

Why use this tool?

This tool can easily be configured as part of your CI/CD pipeline to ensure your Intent Architect design and actual solution codebase are in sync. This is analogous to ensuring your codebase compiles and all tests pass when committing code, and is one of the major benefits of a CI/CD pipeline. The intention is to extend the CI/CD pipeline checks and balances to include that all Intent Architect designs are in sync with the underlying codebase. This tool allows developers to apply the same rigor to Intent Architect changes as they do to codebase changes, ensuring a more consistent and reliable codebase. This practice is particularly important when you have a team of developers collaborating on a shared repository.

Pre-requisites

Latest Long Term Support (LTS) version of .NET.

Additional considerations when running custom modules

If your Intent Architect applications are running custom modules (i.e. modules which are not available at the https://intentarchitect.com/ repository), you will need to ensure the following:

• The repository location containing your custom modules will need to be added as a repository with its Context set to Current Solution.
• The operating system instance running the Software Factory CLI will need access to the location of the .imod files in order for it to be able to restore them during execution.

Installation

This CLI tool is available as a .NET Tool and can be installed with the following command:

dotnet tool install Intent.SoftwareFactory.CLI --global

You should see output to the effect of:

You can invoke the tool using the following command: intent-cli
Tool 'intent.softwarefactory.cli' (version 'x.x.x') was successfully installed.

Updating

A new version of the Software Factory CLI tool is also built and published as part of the automated build process which builds and publishes the Intent Architect desktop application. The version of the tool will always correspond with the version of the desktop application.

The same command for installation (dotnet tool install Intent.SoftwareFactory.CLI --global) will update the tool if an update is available and if none is available it reinstalls it making it safe to run the command as often as desired to ensure the tool is up to date.

Usage

intent-cli [command] [options]

Options

Commands

ensure-no-outstanding-changes command

Runs the Software Factory and if there are any outstanding changes it prints out an error and exits with a non-zero return code.

ensure-no-outstanding-changes usage

intent-cli ensure-no-outstanding-changes <username> <password> <isln-path> [options]

ensure-no-outstanding-changes arguments

ensure-no-outstanding-changes options

apply-pending-changes command

Runs the Software Factory and applies any outstanding changes.

apply-pending-changes usage

intent-cli apply-pending-changes <username> <password> <isln-path> [options]

apply-pending-changes arguments

apply-pending-changes options

Example: Azure Pipelines

Create a variable group with the Intent Architect account details

Create a variable group with the Intent Architect account details, for example:

Link the variable group to the pipeline you want to use it in

Variable groups are defined globally for an Azure DevOps project, to be able to access a variable group for a particular pipeline, it needs to be linked to it.

Add the variable group and other variables to the pipeline YAML file

To make the variable group available to a stage within your pipeline, it will need to be added to its variables. You may also want to define variables for the other command line arguments and options:

variables:
- group: 'Intent Architect Credentials'
- name: 'intentSolutionPath'
  value: 'intent'

Create a step to install the CLI

- task: PowerShell@2
  displayName: 'Install Intent Architect Software Factory CLI'
  inputs:
    targetType: 'inline'
    pwsh: true
    script: 'dotnet tool install Intent.SoftwareFactory.CLI --global'

Create a step to run the CLI

- task: PowerShell@2
  displayName: 'run intent cli'
  env:
    INTENT_USER: $(intent-architect-user)
    INTENT_PASS: $(intent-architect-password)
    INTENT_SOLUTION_PATH: $(intentSolutionPath)
  inputs:
    targetType: 'inline'
    pwsh: true
    script: |
      intent-cli ensure-no-outstanding-changes "$Env:INTENT_USER" "$Env:INTENT_PASS" "$Env:INTENT_SOLUTION_PATH"

A complete YAML file

trigger:
  batch: 'true'
  branches:
    include:
    - '*'

pool:
  vmImage: 'ubuntu-latest'

variables:
- group: 'Intent Architect Credentials'
- name: 'intentSolutionPath'
  value: 'intent'

steps:

- task: PowerShell@2
  displayName: 'Install Intent Architect Software Factory CLI'
  inputs:
    targetType: 'inline'
    pwsh: true
    script: 'dotnet tool install Intent.SoftwareFactory.CLI --global'

- task: PowerShell@2
  displayName: 'run intent cli'
  env:
    INTENT_USER: $(intent-architect-user)
    INTENT_PASS: $(intent-architect-password)
    INTENT_SOLUTION_PATH: $(intentSolutionPath)
  inputs:
    targetType: 'inline'
    pwsh: true
    script: |
      intent-cli ensure-no-outstanding-changes "$Env:INTENT_USER" "$Env:INTENT_PASS" "$Env:INTENT_SOLUTION_PATH"

Run the pipeline

When you run the pipeline, it should now install the CLI and run it.