C#•4y ago

Publishing a CLI tool as a single-file app

So I've made a CLI tool (see #showcase) which I would sort of like to be able to distribute without requiring the .NET SDK for people to manually build and install it themselves. I know you can publish projects as single-file distributable applications, although is this possible to do with a CLI tool, or would you have to package it with some kind of installer?

ThinkerOP•11/5/22, 11:56 PM

Obviously I could just tell people to add it to their PATH themselves, although that sounds kind of dumb.

Angius•11/5/22, 11:56 PM

Single-file self-contained just get released as a single binary

Angius•11/5/22, 11:56 PM

So you end up with

tool.exe

tool.exe

for example

ThinkerOP•11/5/22, 11:57 PM

yeah that sounds good

Angius•11/5/22, 11:57 PM

No need for any installers or anything. The user can just download the zip, unzip it wherever, and use it just like that

ThinkerOP•11/5/22, 11:57 PM

Except I would kind of like for users to not have to add it to their PATH themselves

ThinkerOP•11/5/22, 11:58 PM

The "installation" would just be doing that

Angius•11/5/22, 11:58 PM

That would need an installer of some sort then, yeah

Angius•11/5/22, 11:58 PM

Or the tool itself can have some function like that

Angius•11/5/22, 11:59 PM

The user can run

C:/Whatever/SomeLocation/tool.exe addpath

C:/Whatever/SomeLocation/tool.exe addpath

which will add it to

PATH

PATH

, and from then on they can just call it with

tool

tool

Angius•11/5/22, 11:59 PM

Although setting

PATH

PATH

with C# is wonky IME

AAngius The user can run `C:/Whatever/SomeLocation/tool.exe addpath` which will add it t...

ThinkerOP•11/5/22, 11:59 PM

Didn't know that, that's neat

Angius•11/5/22, 11:59 PM

Well, it's just a suggestion, not a built-in feature lol

Angius•11/5/22, 11:59 PM

Something you'd have to make yourself

ThinkerOP•11/5/22, 11:59 PM

Okay so easiest would just be to publish it as a single-file, then have users manually add it to their PATH

Angius•11/6/22, 12:00 AM

Probably, yeah

ThinkerOP•11/6/22, 12:00 AM

sounds reasonable

ThinkerOP•11/6/22, 12:00 AM

I don't really wanna have to make an installer for this or anything

Mayor McCheese•11/6/22, 12:49 AM

Consider adding a help message for how to add it to the path

ThinkerOP•11/6/22, 12:57 AM

welp, too late now >_>

mtreit•11/6/22, 2:43 AM

Is "dotnet tool install" something anyone can publish for? That's the best end-user experience I've seen for installing CLI tools

Mmtreit Is "dotnet tool install" something anyone can publish for? That's the best end-u...

ThinkerOP•11/6/22, 8:02 AM

Well you need the .NET SDK to do that

TThinker Well you need the .NET SDK to do that

mtreit•11/6/22, 8:08 AM

realivanjxツ•11/6/22, 9:40 AM

you dont enable native aot for this tool? im curious abt the output size with native aot enabled

ThinkerOP•11/6/22, 10:09 AM

eh, I could, but it's not that important

ThinkerOP•11/6/22, 10:10 AM

it's only 58mb

ThinkerOP•11/6/22, 10:10 AM

(which I don't think is that big...?)

TThinker Well you need the .NET SDK to do that

TeBeCo•11/6/22, 11:21 AM

yeah

dotnet tool

dotnet tool

require SDK ... for a reason I just don't fucking understand

TeBeCo•11/6/22, 11:22 AM

and when

winget

winget

went out and got announced in .net conf or whateever the conference was

TeBeCo•11/6/22, 11:22 AM

the PO/PM of Winget and a dev were live at the end for a small Q&A

TeBeCo•11/6/22, 11:22 AM

smart and fast thinking ... I asked on twitter if they will source from

dotnet tool

dotnet tool

TeBeCo•11/6/22, 11:23 AM

answer from both ...

TeBeCo•11/6/22, 11:23 AM

"what is dotnet tool ?"

TeBeCo•11/6/22, 11:23 AM

mega

TeBeCo•11/6/22, 11:24 AM

my guess is that

dotnet tool

dotnet tool

are pushed to nuget.org so

dotnet tool install/restore

dotnet tool install/restore

require

nuget

nuget

client / code => SDK

TTeBeCo "what is dotnet tool ?"

mtreit•11/6/22, 7:24 PM

Oh dear

mtreit•11/6/22, 7:25 PM

winget is nice maybe things will improve in the future

ThinkerOP•11/6/22, 7:40 PM

As a conclusion, I think the thing I've come up with is that I'm gonna have an

install

install

command for my tool which adds the directory to the user's PATH, plus this also lets me set up additional configuration and stuff.

Mayor McCheese•11/6/22, 9:37 PM

so portable by default or install is required?

MMayor McCheese so portable by default or install is required?

ThinkerOP•11/6/22, 9:52 PM

wdym?

TThinker wdym?

Mayor McCheese•11/6/22, 11:04 PM

Do I need to install to use the tool or can I just set directory and go

ThinkerOP•11/6/22, 11:06 PM

rn you can plop the exe inside a directory, add it to your path and go

ThinkerOP•11/6/22, 11:20 PM

I kinda wanna keep it like that, although it unfortunately means I can't do configuration or anything

ThinkerOP•11/6/22, 11:52 PM

Well my current setup is this

Download latest release from my repo to some directory
Open directory in terminal
Run
```
./folder install
```
```
./folder install
```

ThinkerOP•11/6/22, 11:52 PM

Which works decently enough imo

ThinkerOP•11/6/22, 11:53 PM

I've never used Winget so idk how to use it really

TThinker Well my current setup is this 1. Download latest release from my repo to some di...

ThinkerOP•11/6/22, 11:56 PM

although to be fair this is kind of risky