Training
Module
Publish an ASP.NET Core app - Training
Learn how to publish an ASP.NET Core app for deployment to a web server or cloud service.
This browser is no longer supported.
Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.
Publishing your app as Native AOT produces an app that's self-contained and that has been ahead-of-time (AOT) compiled to native code. Native AOT apps have faster startup time and smaller memory footprints. These apps can run on machines that don't have the .NET runtime installed.
The benefit of Native AOT is most significant for workloads with a high number of deployed instances, such as cloud infrastructure and hyper-scale services. .NET 8 adds ASP.NET Core support for native AOT.
The Native AOT deployment model uses an ahead-of-time compiler to compile IL to native code at the time of publish. Native AOT apps don't use a just-in-time (JIT) compiler when the application runs. Native AOT apps can run in restricted environments where a JIT isn't allowed. Native AOT applications target a specific runtime environment, such as Linux x64 or Windows x64, just like publishing a self-contained app.
Visual Studio 2022, including the Desktop development with C++ workload with all default components.
Add <PublishAot>true</PublishAot>
to your project file.
This property enables Native AOT compilation during publish. It also enables dynamic code-usage analysis during build and editing. It's preferable to put this setting in the project file rather than passing it on the command line, since it controls behaviors outside publish.
<PropertyGroup>
<PublishAot>true</PublishAot>
</PropertyGroup>
Publish the app for a specific runtime identifier using dotnet publish -r <RID>
.
The following example publishes the app for Windows as a Native AOT application on a machine with the required prerequisites installed.
dotnet publish -r win-x64 -c Release
The following example publishes the app for Linux as a Native AOT application. A Native AOT binary produced on Linux machine is only going to work on same or newer Linux version. For example, Native AOT binary produced on Ubuntu 20.04 is going to run on Ubuntu 20.04 and later, but it isn't going to run on Ubuntu 18.04.
dotnet publish -r linux-arm64 -c Release
The app is available in the publish directory and contains all the code needed to run in it, including a stripped-down version of the coreclr runtime.
Check out the Native AOT samples available in the dotnet/samples repository on GitHub. The samples include Linux and Windows Dockerfiles that demonstrate how to automate installation of prerequisites and publish .NET projects with Native AOT using containers.
The IsAotCompatible
property is used to indicate whether a library is compatible with Native AOT. Consider when a library sets the IsAotCompatible
property to true
, for example:
<PropertyGroup>
<IsAotCompatible>true</IsAotCompatible>
</PropertyGroup>
The preceding configuration assigns a default of true
to the following properties:
IsTrimmable
EnableTrimAnalyzer
EnableSingleFileAnalyzer
EnableAotAnalyzer
These analyzers help to ensure that a library is compatible with Native AOT.
By default, Native AOT publishing produces debug information in a separate file:
The debug file is necessary for running the app under the debugger or inspecting crash dumps. On Unix-like platforms, set the StripSymbols
property to false
to include the debug information in the native binary. Including debug information makes the native binary larger.
<PropertyGroup>
<StripSymbols>false</StripSymbols>
</PropertyGroup>
Native AOT apps have the following limitations:
Assembly.LoadFile
.System.Reflection.Emit
.The publish process analyzes the entire project and its dependencies for possible limitations. Warnings are issued for each limitation the published app might encounter at run time.
The following table shows supported compilation targets.
Platform | Supported architecture | Notes |
---|---|---|
Windows | x64, Arm64, x86 | |
Linux | x64, Arm64, Arm | |
macOS | x64, Arm64 | |
iOS | Arm64 | |
iOSSimulator | x64, Arm64 | |
tvOS | Arm64 | |
tvOSSimulator | x64, Arm64 | |
MacCatalyst | x64, Arm64 | |
Android | x64, Arm64, Arm | Experimental, no built-in Java interop |
For more information about how specific platform is supported with Native AOT, follow the link from the table.
.NET feedback
.NET is an open source project. Select a link to provide feedback:
Training
Module
Publish an ASP.NET Core app - Training
Learn how to publish an ASP.NET Core app for deployment to a web server or cloud service.