C#C
C#•3y ago
MiKom

Publishing application with native libraries

Hey.

I'm trying to create an application that depends on some native shared libraries (written in C++). I created a NativeLibraries project that contains the required shared libraries as Content elements in .csproj:
    <Content Condition="$(OS)=='Unix'" Include="../path/to/x64/library.so" LinkBase="runtimes/linux-x64/native">
      <CopyToOutputDirectory>Always</CopyToOutputDirectory>
    </Content>
    <Content Condition="$(OS)=='Unix'" Include="../path/to/arm/library.so" LinkBase="runtimes/linux-arm/native">
      <CopyToOutputDirectory>Always</CopyToOutputDirectory>
    </Content>


Then my main application depends on this NativeLibraries project. When I build it, everything is fine, the native libraries are nicely placed in runtimes/* folder in the build directory of the main application.

Problem is that the libraries are not copied to the output directory directly for rid-specific publishing (dotnet publish -r linux-arm) but are still present in runtimes/linux-arm/native folder. Unlike for example SkiaSharp (that I also use). The native libraries of SkiaSharp are correctly copied directly to the publish output directory. SkiaSharp doesn't seem to be particularly clever here:
<ItemGroup>
    <!-- glibc -->
    <PackageFile Include="..\..\output\native\linux\x64\libHarfBuzzSharp*" PackagePath="runtimes\linux-x64\native\%(Filename)%(Extension)" />
    <PackageFile Include="..\..\output\native\linux\x86\libHarfBuzzSharp*" PackagePath="runtimes\linux-x86\native\%(Filename)%(Extension)" />


And the PackageFile is expanded as follows:
  <ItemGroup>
    <None Include="@(PackageFile)" Link="%(PackagePath)" Pack="True" />
  </ItemGroup>


Which is similar to my Content element. I tried adding this Pack as well but it didn't help.

Probably, SkiaSharp is doing something else that I don't see here. What may it be?
Microsoft docs mostly talk about packaging native libraries as Nuget packages which is not the case for me. Thanks
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