Additions to the .NET Core SDK Helpers: Install releases right from the CLI

Following my previous post on creating some handy helpers for the .NET Core SDK, I received some great feedback from the community - thank you!

You can grab these handy helpers for the .NET Core CLI here.

One of the requested features was to list available releases and install them directly from the CLI. So I hacked away and managed to implement this, not yet perfect; but basic functionality on the existing helpers.

Note: The following examples are shown using the .net short-hand notation which is an alias to dotnet

To list the available releases, run the following:

> .net sdk releases
Releases available for the .NET Core SDK are:  
2016-06-27      1.0.0-preview2-003121  
2016-09-13      1.0.0-preview2-003131  
2016-10-17      1.0.0-preview2-003148  
2016-12-13      1.0.0-preview2-003156  
2016-11-16      1.0.0-preview2.1-003177  
2017-03-07      1.0.1  
2017-05-09      1.0.4  
2017-05-10      2.0.0-preview1-005977  
2017-06-28      2.0.0-preview2-006497  

This calls out to an endpoint containing all releases of the .NET Core assets - thanks to Scott Hanselman.

To download a specific SDK, simply provide the version:

> .net sdk get 1.0.4
Downloading .NET Core SDK version 1.0.4 for platform win-x64...  
https://dotnetcli.blob.core.windows.net/dotnet/Sdk/1.0.4/dotnet-dev-win-x64.1.0.4.exe  

or specify latest for the latest version:

> .net sdk get latest
Downloading .NET Core SDK version 2.0.0-preview2-006497 for platform win-x64...  
https://dotnetcli.blob.core.windows.net/dotnet/Sdk/2.0.0-preview2-006497/dotnet-sdk-2.0.0-preview2-006497-win-x64.exe  

It is also possible to specify the target platform, which defaults on win-x64 if not provided:

> .net sdk get latest win-x86
Downloading .NET Core SDK version 2.0.0-preview2-006497 for platform win-x86...  
https://dotnetcli.blob.core.windows.net/dotnet/Sdk/2.0.0-preview2-006497/dotnet-sdk-2.0.0-preview2-006497-win-x86.exe  

After the download completes, it simply just starts the installer exe as per normal.

Download .NET Core CLI Helpers for Windows & Linux/Mac.

This is still far from perfect, so please do leave your comments down below. I would love to get your feedback.