The output of `dotnet publish` doesn't work on a machine without .NET Core installed

Note: I posted this as a question on Stack Overflow first, because I thought I was doing something wrong.

My example project is here: https://github.com/christianspecht/CoreTestVisualStudio

• I created a new project in Visual Studio Community Edition: “New Project” ⇒ “Web” ⇒ “Console Application (Package)”
• I created a new publish profile inside Visual Studio (“Build” ⇒ “Publish” in the menu)

Then, I do “Build” ⇒ “Publish” in the menu again, and Visual Studio builds my app.

The result is about 115 MB, (1138 files in 804 folders), and looks like this:

When I copy this on another Windows machine without .NET Core installed and execute it, it runs without errors.

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Now I’m trying to build the same project outside Visual Studio, via the command line:

dotnet publish "%~dp0\src\CoreTestVisualStudio" -c Release -r win7-x64 -o "%~dp0\release\cli"

The result looks different than the first one - only 25 MB / 162 files, all in the same folder:

Initially the result was even smaller because I forgot to add Microsoft.NETCore.Runtime as a dependency, but even after doing that, it still does not run on my second machine without .NET Core installed:

English translation:

Can’t start the program because MSVCP140.dll is missing on this computer. Re-install the program to fix the problem.

Apparently MSVCP140.dll belongs to the C++ runtime.

But: when I do “Build” ⇒ “Publish” in Visual Studio, the output does not contain this DLL, and it works on the other machine anyway.

Maybe I’m still doing something wrong (and I understand that parts of .NET Core are moving targets at the moment), but unfortunately, the docs about building console apps are not finished yet.

[christianspecht]

@piotrpMSFT: unfortunately, I’m not able to re-open the issue myself. But IMO it should be re-opened.

I did try to publish via the command line interface. Here’s the short version of the long text in my issue:

1. create project in Visual Studio, publish via Visual Studio ⇒ the result works on a machine without .NET Core installed
2. go to the command line (i.e. outside Visual Studio) and try to publish the same project via dotnet publish ⇒ the result does not work on a machine without .NET Core installed

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By the way, it’s not related to the fact that I originally created the project in Visual Studio. When I follow the steps in this tutorial and do dotnet publish in the end, the result doesn’t work on a machine without .NET Core either.

[christianspecht]

Please don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t complaining. I don’t care about the size increase. It’s rather the opposite - I had expected that the size would increase more by including the C++ runtime.