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A fully self-contained natively compiled C# Hello World, including GC and everything can be as small as ~440 kB (twitter.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/programming@programming.dev
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[–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

The question is, how good is NativeAOT comparable to a static binary from C++ or Go? As we both know Microsoft has a very poor track record when it comes to static builds / "self-contained" stuff. My question was mostly satire but I still would like to know how "self-containted" are those applications.

Does it effectively output a single binary? Does it create some kind of clusterf*k and awkward packaging formats like other MS solutions such as UWP? Will it actually be deployable to a random fresh install of Debian 12 or Windows 10? What about compatibility with older systems?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago* (1 child)

    Does it effectively output a single binary?

    Yes, that's one of the points of NativeAOT, a self-contained single binary, exactly as Go does it.

    Does it create some kind of clusterf*k and awkward packaging formats like other MS solutions such as UWP?

    No, you can create .exe files.

    Will it actually be deployable to a random fresh install of Debian 12 or Windows 10?

    Yes, NativeAOT supports Windows, Linux and MacOS, x64 and Arm64.

    What about compatibility with older systems?

    Not sure about that, I suppose it depends on the targets each .NET version support. For example, .NET 8 will drop RHEL 7 and only RHEL 8 and later.

    And to play devil's advocate: this won't work for all existing .NET applications. If you use reflection (which is AOT unfriendly), chances are that you will have to rework a ton of stuff in order to get to a point where NativeAOT works. There's a middle solution though, called ReadyToRun, which has some advantages compared to running fully with the JIT compiler.

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  • [–] -1 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Thank you for the link, so --self-contained will results in "a folder that has our exe and everything that is required to run it (...) a little over 200 files" while /p:PublishSingleFile=true will result in a 70MB file for a simple hello world. This kind of confirms my cheap satire :D it is nice this is an option now but the mess and size is crazy. Statically built Qt programs for Windows, with a GUI, are usually around 10MB for a simple app.

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