Convert .NET Core console application to self-contained application

Question

I have a .NET Core console application that I can run with the dotnet command locally.

Is it possibly we wrap this into a self-contained application for Windows 2012 Server without going back to Visual Studio or having the source code? (i.e. with just the assemblies from the publish command).

Answer 1

You can create a simple console project with the same name and perform a self-contained publish. The tooling will resolve all necessary steps. You can then copy all files form the portable publish over the self-contained content. This will even work for .NET Core 2.0 where the name of the dll file to run is embedded into the main .exe file (for 1.0 / 1.1, it uses its own name to resolve the .dll file to run).

Alternatively you copy the shared framework to the destination directory and use its corehost.exe yorapp.dll to run your application.