publish app in mac

Question

Hi,

How do i publish my app in mac ?

In windows i did:

dotnet publish -f net8.0-windows10.0.19041.0 -c Release -p:WindowsPackageType=None -p:WindowsAppSDKSelfContained=true /p:PackageCertificateThumbprint="c01ba45666762f3615cf6813aeb4dc4b1919541d" -p:RuntimeIdentifierOverride=win10-x64

Answer 1

You can publish your .NET app on macOS by running the dotnet publish command in the Terminal with different parameters. Here is a step-by-step guide to walk you through the process.

Step-by-Step Guide

Install .NET SDK:

Make sure that the .NET SDK is installed on your macOS; you may download it from the official website of .NET.

Open Terminal:

Open the Terminal application on your Mac.

Go to Your Project Directory:

Change to the directory that contains.NET Core project with the cd command.

sh

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cd /path/to/your/project

Publish Your App:

Run the following command to publish your app with dotnet publish and pass the framework, runtime identifier (RID), and configuration. For macOS, RID is typically osx-x64 or osx-arm64 based on your Mac architecture.

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dotnet publish -f net8.0 -r osx-x64 -c Release --self-contained

This command tells dotnet publish to:

-f net8.0: target .NET Framework 8.0.

-r osx-x64: This is the runtime identifier for macOS. Use osx-arm64 for Apple Silicon Macs.

-c Release: This sets the configuration to Release.

--self-contained: With this flag, a self-contained application is created, including the .NET runtime.

Finding Published Fils:

Once it has finished publishing your app, you can find it in the bin/Release/net8.0/osx-x64/publish directory. If you specified osx-arm64 as the RID when publishing, then your app shall be located in osx-arm64.

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cd bin/Release/net8.0/osx-x64/publish

Distribute Your App:

The generated folder will contain all the files necessary to run your app on macOS. You can package the contents of that folder into a zip file for distribution, or you can use something like pkgbuild to create an installer package.

Example Commands

Here is an example of a complete set of commands you might run in Terminal:

sh

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cd /path/to/your/project

dotnet publish -f net8.0 -r osx-x64 -c Release --self-contained

cd bin/Release/net8.0/osx-x64/publish

More Tips

Apple Silicon Macs: This runtime identifier is osx-arm64 when targeting Apple Silicon Macs; otherwise, it is osx-x64.

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dotnet publish -f net8.0 -r osx-arm64 -c Release --self-contained

Application Bundle: You might need to bundle your macOS-based applications under an application bundle (.app). You could do that by hand or with additional tools/Scripts.

Signing and Notarization: Besides macOS distribution, specially for distribution outside the App Store, you should consider signing and notarizing your app to prevent security warnings.

These steps should give you a reasonable chance of successfully publishing and distributing your .NET application for macOS.