Chapter 4. Publishing applications with .NET Core 3.1

.NET Core 3.1 applications can be published to use a shared system-wide version of .NET Core or to include .NET Core.

The following methods exist for publishing .NET Core 3.1 applications:

  • Framework-dependent deployment (FDD) - The application uses a shared system-wide version of .NET.
Note

When publishing an application for RHEL, Red Hat recommends using FDD, because it ensures that the application is using an up-to-date version of .NET Core, built by Red Hat, that uses a set of native dependencies. These native libraries are part of the rh-dotnet31 Software Collection.

  • Self-contained deployment (SCD) - The application includes .NET. This method uses a runtime built by Microsoft. Running applications outside the rh-dotnet31 Software Collection may cause issues due to the unavailability of native libraries.

Prerequisites

  • Existing .NET Core application.

    For more information on how to create a .NET Core application, see

4.1. Publishing .NET Core applications

The following procedure outlines how to publish a framework-dependent application.

Procedure

  1. Publish the framework-dependent application:

    $ dotnet publish my-app -f netcoreapp3.1 -c Release

    Replace my-app with the name of the application you want to publish.

  2. Optional: If the application is for RHEL only, trim out the dependencies needed for other platforms:

    $ dotnet restore my-app -r rhel.7-x64
    $ dotnet publish my-app -f netcoreapp3.1 -c Release -r rhel.7-x64 --self-contained false
  3. Enable the Software Collection and pass the application name to run the application on a RHEL system:

    $ scl enable rh-dotnet31 -- dotnet <app>.dll
  4. You can add the scl enable rh-dotnet31 — dotnet <app>.dll command to a script that is published with the application.

    Add the following script to your project and update the APP variable:

    #!/bin/bash
    
    APP=<app>
    SCL=rh-dotnet31
    DIR="$(dirname "$(readlink -f "$0")")"
    
    scl enable $SCL -- "$DIR/$APP" "$@"
  5. To include the script when publishing, add this ItemGroup to the csproj file:

    <ItemGroup>
        <None Update="<scriptname>" Condition="'$(RuntimeIdentifier)' == 'rhel.7-x64' and '$(SelfContained)' == 'false'" CopyToPublishDirectory="PreserveNewest" />
    </ItemGroup>