Compile a .NET Core application as an EXE file using Visual Studio 2017

Question

I created a .NET Core application (v1.1) in Visual Studio 2017. When I compile it, I get a DLL file produced instead of the expected EXE file for the built project. I did ch

Answer 1

Starting with .NET Core 2.2 you can build framework-dependent executables

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Although building a self-contained deployment can be a good solution, it has its own drawbacks. (See R.Titov and Martin Ullrichs' answers on SCD-s.)

Fortunately, .NET Core 2.2 supports the building of so called framework-dependent executable-s, that are essentially a wrapper binary (.exe on Windows) around the standard dll-s.

This way you have all the advantages (and disadvantages) of the standard framework-dependent deployment (again, see Martin's answer), but you have a convenient way to launch it, without having to call it through the dotnet CLI.

You can publish your app as a Framework-Dependent Executable using the following syntax:

dotnet publish -c Release -r  --self-contained false

Where RID is the usual runtime identifier, e.g. win-x64 or whatever platform you wish to build for (see the catalog here).