Assumes .NET 5 or 6. Earlier versions of .NET Core support single file publishing as well, but it’s markedly improved in v5 and v6.

Single file publishing is controlled by three arguments to the dotnet publish command:

For example, the command for publishing to a single file, targeting Windows 10 (64-bit), looks like this:

dotnet publish -c Release -r win10-x64 --self-contained true \
  /p:PublishSingleFile=true

Targeting other OS/architecture combinations is as simple as replacing the RID value in the command with the RID you want to target.

I’ve tested the following RIDs:

You can find more information about RIDs in the .NET Core RID Catalog article.

Technically speaking, the publish command does not produce a “single file” in all cases. Starting with a simple console project named “SingleFilePublish”, the following outputs are produced:

One executable:

SingleFilePublish

5 files, including the executable:

clrcompression.dll
clrjit.dll
coreclr.dll
mscordaccore.dll
SingleFilePublish.exe

8 files, including the executable:

libclrjit.dylib
libcoreclr.dylib
libSystem.IO.Compression.Native.dylib
libSystem.Native.dylib
libSystem.Net.Security.Native.dylib
libSystem.Security.Cryptography.Native.Apple.dylib
libSystem.Security.Cryptography.Native.OpenSsl.dylib
SingleFilePublish

One executable:

SingleFilePublish

With .NET 6, it looks like true single-file publishing has been achieved.

One executable:

SingleFilePublish

One executable:

SingleFilePublish.exe

One executable:

SingleFilePublish

One executable:

SingleFilePublish

When you run the dotnet publish command, outputs are written to the bin/Release/net5.0/publish directory. To deploy, simply copy the contents of this directory to your target machine.

Simplifies the steps described above.

Makefile

LINUX_RID = linux-x64
LINUX_RID_ARM = linux-arm
MAC_RID = osx.10.14-x64
WINDOWS_RID = win10-x64
CONFIGURATION_ARGS = Release
PUBLISH_ARGS = --self-contained true /p:PublishSingleFile=true
 
default:
	@echo 'Targets:'
	@echo '  run'
	@echo '  run-win'
	@echo '  copy-pi'
	@echo '  publish'
	@echo '  publish-win'
	@echo '  publish-mac'
	@echo '  publish-arm'
	@echo '  clean'
 
run: publish
	./bin/Release/net5.0/linux-x64/publish/SingleFilePublish
 
run-win: publish-win
	wine ./bin/Release/net5.0/win10-x64/publish/SingleFilePublish
 
copy-pi: publish-arm
	scp ./bin/Release/net5.0/linux-arm/publish/SingleFilePublish pi@raspi4-main:/home/pi
 
publish:
	dotnet publish -c $(CONFIGURATION_ARGS) -r $(LINUX_RID) $(PUBLISH_ARGS)
 
publish-win:
	dotnet publish -c $(CONFIGURATION_ARGS) -r $(WINDOWS_RID) $(PUBLISH_ARGS)
 
publish-arm:
	dotnet publish -c $(CONFIGURATION_ARGS) -r $(LINUX_RID_ARM) $(PUBLISH_ARGS)
 
publish-mac:
	dotnet publish -c $(CONFIGURATION_ARGS) -r $(MAC_RID) $(PUBLISH_ARGS)
 
clean:
	-rm -rf bin/
	-rm -rf obj/