CLI reference

The project-local tsonic executable exposes two commands. New-project creation is a separate standard npm initializer:

npm create tsonic@latest hello -- --target csharp

See the project creator contract.

tsonic build

tsonic build --project <tsonic.json>
tsonic build -p <tsonic.json>

If --project is omitted, the command uses tsonic.json in the current directory.

The command:

1. reads and validates the project file;
2. recovers any interrupted staged-output transaction;
3. discovers installed plugins;
4. checks the source program;
5. compiles every selected target;
6. publishes target artifacts only when no error diagnostic exists.

Successful output reports the project path, entry point, target ids, and artifact count. Diagnostics are written in this form:

ERROR <source>:<code> <file>:<line>:<column>: <message>
  evidence: <entry>

tsonic targets

tsonic targets --project <tsonic.json>

This discovers the project’s installed plugins and prints one tab-separated target-id and plugin id per available target. Discovery errors cause a nonzero exit.

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	Help, target discovery, or build completed successfully
1	Invalid configuration, plugin failure, compiler diagnostic, target rejection, publication failure, or toolchain failure
2	Unknown CLI command

tsonic build may print project information even when diagnostics are also present. Treat the exit code as the build result.

Output publication

The CLI recovers any interrupted output transaction before compiling. It publishes the complete output tree only when every selected target resolves without an error. A failure leaves the previous successful output in place.

Unsupported commands

There are no init, run, add, or restore subcommands. create-tsonic owns new-project creation and npm installation. Created projects expose native execution through their npm start script; restoration and execution remain owned by npm and the target-native toolchain.