How to get the base path of system-wide .NET Core runtime environment?

Question

When I run dotnet --info, among other information I receive also:

Runtime Environment:
 ...
 Base Path:   C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\1.0.0

Is there any way to get this value programatically in C# application running under .NETCoreApp framework? I'm particularly interested in its Sdks subdirectory, as I need to provide it to a hosted instance of MSBuild when processing some .NET Core projects. Therefore, properties such as AppContext.BaseDirectory are no use to me, because they point to the path of the current application.

I'll probably end up launching dotnet --info and parsing its results, but I wonder whether a more elegant way exists. Thanks.

EDIT: Originaly there was mistakenly dotnet --version instead of dotnet --info.

Answer 1

You could run the "dotnet --info" command from your application and parse the output.

Quick and dirty:

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var basePath = GetDotNetCoreBasePath();
        Console.WriteLine();
        Console.ReadLine();
    }
    static String GetDotNetCoreBasePath()
    {
        Process process = new Process
        {
            StartInfo =
            {
                UseShellExecute = false,
                RedirectStandardOutput = true,
                RedirectStandardError = true,
                CreateNoWindow = true,
                FileName = "dotnet",
                Arguments = "--info"
            }
        };
        process.Start();
        process.WaitForExit();
        if (process.HasExited)
        {
            string output = process.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd();
            if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(output) == false)
            {
                var reg = new Regex("Base Path:(.+)");
                var matches = reg.Match(output);
                if (matches.Groups.Count >= 2)
                    return matches.Groups[1].Value.Trim();
            }
        }
        throw new Exception("DotNet Core Base Path not found.");
    }
}