CODEWITHSUNDEEP
asp.net.netasp.net-core.net-core
Liero
Liero

Reputation: 27338

Do .NET Core apps require the .NET runtime installed on the target machine?

In this video, Scott Hanselman interviews a guy from the ASP.NET team. He says that one of the goals of ASP.NET 5, on top of .NET Core, is that the apps won't depend on the .NET Framework and GAC assemblies on the hosting server. Instead, .NET Core libraries will be released via NuGet packages and apps will be deployed with their dependencies.

One of the reasons for this is so Microsoft can quickly release a bug fix or new feature, and we don't have to wait until the new version (of the full framework) is installed on our hosting environment.

My question is:

Are the apps built on .NET Core really independent of the version of .NET installed on the target machine, and can they run even without the .NET Framework installed?

Upvotes: 9

Views: 2902

Answers (2)

Sorrien
Sorrien

Reputation: 141

A normal .net core app requires that you install .net core on the machine you wish to run the application on. There is a way to avoid this however, by publishing a self contained app. You can publish your app with the requisite version of .net core included. This will make your app larger, but if you only need one application on a machine to run .net, you need a specific version of .net, or you want to make a portable application, this is a good choice.

Upvotes: 3

Karl Anderson
Karl Anderson

Reputation: 34846

Yes, the framework you use in your application is completely independent of the .NET Framework installed on the target server, because the Core .NET Framework is referenced via NuGet packages and can be bundled up for deployment via the DNX Utility, specifically of interest to you will be the dnu publish command.

Here is an excerpt, describing what dnu publish does:

Publish (dnu publish)

The publish command will package your application into a self-contained directory that can be launched. It will create the following directory structure:

  • output/
  • output/packages
  • output/appName
  • output/commandName.cmd

The packages directory contains all the packages your application needs to run.

The appName directory will contain all of your applications code, if you have project references they will appear as their own directory with code at this level as well.

So the .NET Core will exist in the output/packages directory and will not need to be installed on the target server.

Upvotes: 7

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