How to publish AOT?

[Symbai]

If I publish the sample app, I still get a managed .NET dll file with an executable host file and all the .NET runtime dll files. But when I publish a console project with AOT I get a single unmanaged executable. This is what I've expected for Winforms as well.

I used this command dotnet publish -r win-x64 and then went to the publish folder.

[kant2002]

Question. Are you have .NET 7 SDK installed? I have 7.0.100-rc.2.22452.3 (and previously version was working fine) and everything was working. Are you have either <PublishAot>true</PublishAot> or <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.DotNet.ILCompiler" Version="7.0.0-*" /> (not needed in .NET 7) in your project file?

[Symbai]

My SDK is 6.0.400 and I'm building the winforms sample project, <PublishAot>true</PublishAot> was missing, <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.DotNet.ILCompiler" Version="7.0.0-*" /> not.

I've now added <PublishAot>true</PublishAot> and published again but still no AOT.

[kant2002]

I think this is your answer. dotnet/runtime#61231 (comment) or maybe slightly earlier for context. For now .NET 6 SDK a bit broken. You can either use specific version of ILCompiler or wait for NET 6 SDK to land fix, or install NET 7 preview

[Symbai]

How can I use a specific version of the ILCompiler?

[kant2002]

Try

<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.DotNet.ILCompiler" Version="7.0.0-preview.6.22324.4" />

[Symbai]

With this I get: error : The ResolvedILCompilerPack ItemGroup is required for target ImportRuntimeIlcPackageTarget

[kant2002]

NativeAOT does not support .NET 6, so I probably would limit my attempts here too. Let me know if you still need this.

[Symbai]

Yeah it works fine with .NET 7. But it is normal that the output files are extremely huge in release mode? And that there are still many other files in the output directory?

For a console project a get a rather small app with only one executable.

[kant2002]

native dll which is in the output dir you most likely can ignore. They are coming from WPF and that's SDK issue. Probbaly nobody bother with this yet. Minimal size of output EXE is limited to the fact that WinForms is using reflection a lot, Control is very fat class. Not sure what can be done to this, but this is mostly related to WinForms code.

[Symbai]

Yeah I was talking about all of these:

clrjit.dll
D3DCompiler_47_cor3.dll
mscordbi.dll
vcruntime140_cor3.dll

and so on. There are 21 additional files with a total size of 21mb.

[kant2002]

Not quite clear why do you have 21 additional files. If they are from your external libs, probably you need them.
For me, tipical WinForms App + NativeAOT uses only

• D3DCompiler_47_cor3.dll
• PenImc_cor3.dll
• PresentationNative_cor3.dll
• vcruntime140_cor3.dll
• wpfgfx_cor3.dll
  Size of 8MB. You can safely delete these files, if you don't have some WPF dependency which probably anyway would not work.

Other files, I never seen them. I assume we did not count PDB files, they are not required obviously.

[Symbai]

I dont count PDB file. It is a simple "hello world" Winforms app with no other external lib / dependency than WinFormsComInterop. Deleting all code reduces it to 17 additiona files.

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <OutputType>WinExe</OutputType>
    <TargetFramework>net7.0-windows</TargetFramework>
    <Nullable>enable</Nullable>
    <UseWindowsForms>true</UseWindowsForms>
    <ImplicitUsings>enable</ImplicitUsings>
    <PlatformTarget>x64</PlatformTarget>
    <AllowUnsafeBlocks>true</AllowUnsafeBlocks>
    <PublishAot>true</PublishAot>
    <_SuppressWinFormsTrimError>true</_SuppressWinFormsTrimError>
  </PropertyGroup>

  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="WinFormsComInterop" Version="0.3.2" />
  </ItemGroup>

</Project>

Project file:
WinFormsNativeAOTTest.zip

//edit: I just moved only the executable into a new folder and it runs. So maybe all of the additional files can be deleted. I however havent tried running the executable on a system without any SDK / runtime / VC++ redis installed.

[kant2002]

What command do you use for publish? dotnet publish. Also I belive PlatformTarget is redundant.

[kant2002]

Can you run just dotnet publish without additional switched, and open bin\Debug\net7.0-windows\win-x64\publish\ folder?

[Symbai]

Doesn't matter, I published through VS but using dotnet publish without any additional parameter generates the same output:

\bin\Debug\net7.0-windows\win-x64\publish:

//edit: and yes I've cleaned the output folder before publishing.

.NET SDK:
  Version: 7.0.100
  Commit: E12B7AF219

Running time environment:
  OS name: Windows
  OS version: 10.0.22621
  OS Platform: Windows
  RID: Win10-X64
  Base Path: C: \ Program Files \ Dotnet \ SDK \ 7.0.100 \

Host:
   Version: 7.0.0
   Architecture: X64
   Commit: D099F075E4

.NET SDKS installed:
   6.0.100-preview.5.21302.13 [C: \ Program Files \ Dotnet \ SDK]
   6.0.112 [C: \ Program Files \ Dotnet \ SDK]
   7.0.100 [C: \ Program Files \ Dotnet \ SDK]

[kant2002]

do you have <PublishAot>true</PublishAot> inside your csproj?

[Symbai]

I've attached the project file above, yes I have.

[kant2002]

1. I unpack application to C:\Users\User\Downloads\WinFormsNativeAOTTest
   
2. Run dotnet publish
   
3. Now I have following files
   

If you have something else, you some issues in your setup. Maybe you have some Directory.Build.props above which annulls PublishAot or something else. Files which you are show indicates that you publish as regular self-contained app, not as NativeAOT application

[NCLnclNCL]

hey bro. i can build winform native oat but i click button and it notifi errors
See the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at getcpu.Form1.checkactive() + 0x19d
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnClick(EventArgs) + 0xcf
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs) + 0xb1
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message&, MouseButtons, Int32) + 0x268
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message&) + 0x670
at System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase.WndProc(Message&) + 0x161
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Interop.User32.WM msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam) + 0x70

************** Loaded Assemblies **************
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************** JIT Debugging **************

[kant2002]

@NCLnclNCL can you show what's in your Form1.checkactive function? Can you confirm that this is name of event handler for button click?

[NCLnclNCL]

@NCLnclNCL can you show what's in your Form1.checkactive function? Can you confirm that this is name of event handler for button click?
hey bro, i know .net framework has .net native and it supports compiling for x86, why is it difficult to compile x86 for native aot at .net core