CentOS build agent and .NET Core SDK versions

Our build server running on CentOS ends up building different repos, which use different versions of the .NET Core SDK.

The SDK version is defined via global.json and instructs the CLI which version to load in that context.

Surely the CLI is smart enough to roll forward. That means in case you target version 2.0.2 and the machine only has 2.0.3, it will (should) work just fine with that version.

I've tested setting my global.json to 2.0.2 where only SDK version 2.0.0 was available:
$ dotnet --version
2.0.0

Surprising to me it built and tests passed without warnings. So it also rolls backwards somehow.

When the exact SDK version defined via global.json is available, that's the one used by the CLI.
I believe that's a safer approach to have on a build server. Which means having all SDK versions in all agents.

That is, regardless which agent the build runs, it'll always use the same SDK version. Otherwise potentially one agent, created at a later time, could lack the exact SDK version used via global.json.

Installing all SDK versions

Using yum's wildcard, it's easy enough to install every single .NET Core SDK available on the official Microsoft feed, simply by:

$ sudo yum install dotnet-sdk-*

As an example, this agent had only the SDK version 2.1.4 (the latest one).

By running yum install dotnet-sdk-* on this machine:

Easy enough.

All SDK versions made available by Microsoft are now installed.