Distribute your aplications!

Wondering how to distribute your wonderful .NET application to your fellow peeps? Bored to pack your stuff in a .zip that you hate as much as your users? You are in the correct place! With it, you can create your .Deb and AppImage packages for Linux systems like Ubuntu, Debian and others. Woohoo!

Overview

One of the most flagrant annoyances of the .NET world is the absence of standardized ways to distribute "classic" applications, those that are for end users. Imagine that you have a beautiful cross-platform application, like the ones created using Avalonia UI. Everything is fine until you need to distribute you apps.

DotnetPackaging has been created to give an answer to those that want to distribute their applications in a more convenient way. It's about time, uh?

How can I use this?

The application can be used as a library or as a .NET tool.

Using it as a .NET Tool

Easy peasy. Install the tool by executing this command:

dotnet tool install --global DotnetPackaging.Console

After the tool is installed, just invoke it with the appropriate arguments.

Deploying with dotnetdeployer

The repository also includes a CLI called dotnetdeployer. It automates the publishing of NuGet packages and GitHub releases so it can be easily invoked from CI pipelines like Azure DevOps.

The Azure Pipeline determines the version using GitVersion, so releases automatically follow the Git history. The tool locates the git repository by walking up from the solution directory so the correct repository is used. It first tries NuGetVersion or MajorMinorPatch from GitVersion to ensure the value is NuGet compatible. If GitVersion fails, the pipeline falls back to git describe --tags --long and converts the result into a NuGet-compatible version.

You can publish the tool itself using a single command:

dotnet run --project src/DotnetPackaging.DeployerTool/DotnetPackaging.DeployerTool.csproj -- \
    nuget --project src/DotnetPackaging.DeployerTool/DotnetPackaging.DeployerTool.csproj \
    --version 1.0.0 --api-key <YOUR_NUGET_API_KEY>

Packages are pushed using dotnet nuget push --skip-duplicate, so running the command multiple times won't fail if the same version already exists on NuGet.

If no --project is supplied, dotnetdeployer automatically discovers all packable projects from the solution. The tool searches for DotnetPackaging.sln or any solution file by walking up the directory tree, so you rarely need to specify --solution.

Samples

AppImage

This tool can create AppImage packages. Just invoke it this way:

dotnetpackaging appimage ... <options>

From single directory

You can create them using a single build directory (using dotnet publish, for example). The tool will use the binaries and resources in that directory to create the AppImage.

From AppImage

You can create a directory structure according to the AppDir specs and use this tool to create the package from it.

Deb files

This is a sample to create a deb package.

dotnetpackaging deb --directory c:\repos\myapp\bin\Release\net7.0\publish\linux-x64 --metadata C:\Users\JMN\Desktop\Testing\metadata.deb.json --output c:\users\jmn\desktop\testing\myapp.1.0.0.x64.deb

• Wait, wait! I understand the --directory and --output options, but what's the json file?

it's a special file that you need to edit to customize the properties of your package.

Metadata.deb.json

This is a sample file. Customize it to your needs.

{
    "Executables": {
      "MyApp.Desktop": {
        "CommandName": "myapp",
        "DesktopEntry": {
          "Icons": {
            "32": "C:\\Users\\JMN\\Desktop\\Testing\\icon32.png",
            "64": "C:\\Users\\JMN\\Desktop\\Testing\\icon64.png"
          },
          "Name": "Sample application",
          "StartupWmClass": "Sample",
          "Keywords": [
            "Sample"
          ],
          "Comment": "This is a test",
          "Categories": [
            "Financial"
          ]
        }
      }
    },
    "PackageMetadata": {
      "Maintainer": "Some avid programmer",
      "PackageName": "SamplePackage",
      "ApplicationName": "Sample",
      "Architecture": "amd64",
      "Homepage": "https://www.sample.com",
      "License": "MIT",
      "Description": "Sample",
      "Version": "1.0.0"
    }
  }

Acknowledgements

• Huge thanks Alexey Sonkin for his wonderful SquashFS support in his NyaFS library.