dotnet binary showing the wrong version

[mishra14]

From @mishra14 on November 28, 2017 23:5

Steps to reproduce

1. download binary from here
2. run dotnet --info

Expected behavior

.NET Command Line Tools (2.0.3)

Actual behavior

F:\validation\test> . "C:\Users\anmishr\Downloads\dotnet-runtime-2.0.3-win-x64\dotnet.exe" --info
.NET Command Line Tools (2.1.1)

Product Information:
 Version:            2.1.1
 Commit SHA-1 hash:  436d56176b

Runtime Environment:
 OS Name:     Windows
 OS Version:  10.0.16299
 OS Platform: Windows
 RID:         win10-x64
 Base Path:   C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\2.1.1\

Microsoft .NET Core Shared Framework Host

  Version  : 2.0.3
  Build    : a9190d4a75f4a982ae4b4fa8d1a24526566c69df

I think the exe is picking up the same version on my machine irrespective of the dotnet.exe being executed.

Copied from original issue: dotnet/cli#8126

[mishra14]

cc @livarcocc

[mishra14]

From @dasMulli on November 28, 2017 23:24

Looks like multi-level lookup discovering a globally installed SDK. Does it change when you set the environment variable DOTNET_MULTILEVEL_LOOKUP to 0/false?

[mishra14]

@dasMulli That was it. Thanks!
Is it documented? If so I might have missed it. Else it should be.

[mishra14]

From @livarcocc on November 28, 2017 23:49

I am not sure where you mean to document this. Do you mean docs.microsoft.com? If so, I would file an issue a dotnet/docs to add this there.

[mishra14]

Since this does not happen when i download binaries from the readme, we shouldn't need to add this to the repo readme.
I think having a pointer on the docs page would be nice. I will move this issue there.

[mishra14]

Moving here based on recommendation from @livarcocc

The core problem is that the downloads page should have a heads up for binary consumers that this may not work will you set $env:DOTNET_MULTILEVEL_LOOKUP to $False (powershell).

[mairaw]

@livarcocc
when was this environment variable introduced? I'll add this to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/dotnet?#environment-variables. PowerShell is just one way of setting the environment variable.

Do we also need an in-depth article on this multi-level lookup feature?

@mishra14 what you mean by downloads page? You mean on the dot.net site?

[livarcocc]

This was introduced in the 2.0 host at the request of the ASP.NET team.

cc @johnbeisner

[mairaw]

@livarcocc are we missing other env variables? I'm seeing a couple being used in the CLI repo that are not in the docs:

• DOTNET_SKIP_FIRST_TIME_EXPERIENCE
• DOTNET_INSTALL_DIR
• DOTNET_BUILD_SKIP_PACKAGING
• DOTNET_CLI_TELEMETRY_SESSIONID
• DOTNET_CLI_UI_LANGUAGE
• DOTNET_RUNTIME_ID
• DOTNET_SHARED_STORE

do I need to document these too?

anything else?

/cc @KathleenDollard