Support Single-File Apps in .NET 5

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:
  • Published files: ,

• Self-contained (Linux)

  • Publish command:
  • Published files: ,

• Self-contained (Windows):

  • Publish command:
  • Published files: , , , , ,

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

  • Publish command:
  • Published files: ,

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: #11201
• 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. dotnet/sdk#3132
  • AppHost support for extracting contents of a single-file bundle at startup. dotnet/core-setup#5742
• Support single-file apps running from bundle (.net 5)
  • HostModel library
    • Implement bundle format version 2 . dotnet/core-setup#5742
  • SDK
    • Implement support for publishing a few files when necessary for . dotnet/sdk#11586
    • Implement optional settings for single-file publishing.
    • Use SingleFileHost when publishing self-contained single-file apps. dotnet/sdk#11567
    • Trim the set of native dependencies used for single-file publish. #36578
  • Host
    • Move bundle-processing from the host to the framework . #34274
    • Process and files directly from bundle. #34274
    • Implement a callback for the runtime to probe the contents of the bundle. #34845
  • Host Builds
    • Windows: Implement with , , and statically linked. #36230
    • Linux: Implement with host and runtime components statically linked. #32823
  • Runtime
    • Load assemblies directly from bundle . #36052
    • Dependency resolution: Resolve assemblies from bundle . #36052
  • APIs
    • should return the location of the single-file executable #34274