The goal of this effort is enable .Net-Core apps to be published and distributed as a single executable.

Goals

The .Net 5.0 single file solution should be:

• Widely compatible: Apps containing IL assemblies, ready-to-run assemblies, composite assemblies, native binaries, configuration files, etc. can be packaged into one executable.
• Can run managed components of the app directly from bundle, without need for extraction to disk.
• Usable with debuggers and tools.

User Experience

Here's the overall experience for publishing a HelloWorld single-file app in .net 5:

• Framework-dependent

  • Publish command: dotnet publish -r win-x64 --self-contained=false /p:PublishSingleFile=true
  • Published files: HelloWorld.exe, HelloWorld.pdb

• Self-contained (Linux)

  • Publish command: dotnet publish -r linux-x64 /p:PublishSingleFile=true
  • Published files: HelloWorld, HelloWorld.pdb

• Self-contained (Windows):

  • Publish command: dotnet publish -r win-x64 /p:PublishSingleFile=true
  • Published files: HelloWorld.exe, HelloWorld.pdb, coreclr.dll, clrjit.dll, clrcompression.dll, mscordaccore.dll

• Self-contained (Windows) with bundled native components:

  • Publish command: dotnet publish -r win-x64 /p:PublishSingleFile=true /p:IncludeNativeLibrariesInSingleFile=true
  • Published files: HelloWorld.exe, HelloWorld.pdb

Design Document

A detailed discussion of the goals, non-goals, related-work, options, design decisions, and implementation details of supporting single-file apps is available in this design document

Tracking Progress

• Initial proposal and poll for customer response:
  • Poll on GitHub: Support single-file distribution #11201
  • Enterprise customer poll
• Propose staged implementation of the feature.
• Support single-file apps through extraction (.net core 3)
  • Self-Extractor Design.
  • SDK support for publishing apps as a single-file. Publish to Single-File sdk#3132
  • AppHost support for extracting contents of a single-file bundle at startup. AppHost: Support bundles (stage 1) core-setup#5742
• Support single-file apps running from bundle (.net 5)
  • HostModel library
    • Implement bundle format version 2. AppHost: Support bundles (stage 1) core-setup#5742
  • SDK
    • Implement support for publishing a few files when necessary for PublishSingleFile. Single-File: Update Bundler Invocation. sdk#11586
    • Implement optional settings for single-file publishing. Use SingleFileHost sdk#11797
    • Use SingleFileHost when publishing self-contained single-file apps. Use SingleFileHost for self-contained single-file apps sdk#11567 Use SingleFileHost sdk#11797
    • Trim the set of native dependencies used for single-file publish. Produce DropFromSingleFile annotations in RuntimeList.xml #36578 Use SingleFileHost sdk#11797
  • Host
    • Move bundle-processing from the host to the framework . Single-File: Process bundles in the framework #34274
    • Process deps.json and runtimeconfig.json files directly from bundle. Single-File: Process bundles in the framework #34274
    • Implement a callback for the runtime to probe the contents of the bundle. Single-File: Pass BUNDLE_PROBE property to the runtime #34845
  • Host Builds
    • Windows: Implement SingleFileHost with AppHost, HostFxr, and HostPolicy statically linked. Single-File: Implement statically linked apphost #32823 Build an apphost with hostfxr and hostpolicy linked in #36230
    • Linux: Implement SingleFileHost with host and runtime components statically linked.
      • Statically link CoreCLR and ClrJIT with SingleFileHost Single-File: Implement Linux SingleFileHost with statically linked runtime #37119 Host with coreclr linked in #36847
      • Statically link core native libraries with SingleFileHost SingleFile: Statically link core native libraries to Linux SingleFileHost #38304
  • Runtime
    • Load assemblies directly from bundle. Single-File: Implement loading assemblies from bundle #32822 Single-File: Run from Bundle #36052
    • Dependency resolution: Resolve assemblies from bundle. Single-File: Run from Bundle #36052
  • APIs
    • AppContext.BaseDirectory should return the location of the single-file executable Single-File: Process bundles in the framework #34274