PublishSingleFile=true does not result in a true single-file publish

General

.NET SDK Version: 5.0.100

When publishing a single-file, self-contained .NET 5 executable, the resulting published files are not a true single-file output. Rather, the native assemblies (clrcompression.dll, clrjit.dll, etc) are placed next to the published executable, and must be copied along with it for it to properly run. This runs against the concept of a single-file publication, where this should not be needed - nor was it needed in .NET Core 3.1.

To reproduce,

1. dotnet new console
2. dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true -p:PublishSingleFile=true
3. ls bin/Release/net5.0/win-x64/publish/

Observe the results. The native binaries that are published into this directory also include any native binaries that come from nuget packages, or part of the build.

[svdHero]

I came here, because I had exactly the same problem and did not know what was going on. Maybe @motowilliams’s link should somehow be added to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/dotnet-publish. Certainly, the IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract option should be mentioned there.

[motowilliams]

Add a -p:IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract=true to your cli parameters and you end up with a single exe and single pdb file.

Per https://github.com/dotnet/designs/blob/main/accepted/2020/single-file/design.md#user-experience / Self-Contained Publish / Single-file publish Windows with Extraction