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Updated documentation to publish file based application #50904

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Updated documentation to publish file based application
sanchita4collab Jan 6, 2026
7cafa57
Revise publishing tutorial and add next steps
meaghanlewis Jan 6, 2026
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29 changes: 29 additions & 0 deletions docs/core/tutorials/publishing-with-visual-studio-code.md
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Expand Up @@ -96,6 +96,35 @@ In the following steps, you'll look at the files created by the publish process.

1. Enter a name in response to the prompt, and press <kbd>Enter</kbd> to exit.

## Publish a file-based (single-file) app
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@meaghanlewis meaghanlewis Jan 16, 2026

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## Publish a file-based (single-file) app
## Publish a file-based app


The default publishing process creates a framework-dependent deployment, which requires
the .NET runtime to be installed on the target machine. You can also publish a *file-based*
app as a single executable that includes the .NET runtime.

To publish a single-file, self-contained app, run the following command:

```dotnetcli
dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true /p:PublishSingleFile=true
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@meaghanlewis meaghanlewis Jan 16, 2026

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With file-based apps, I don't think you need to specify all of these options.

```

Replace win-x64 with the appropriate runtime identifier (RID) for your target platform,
such as linux-x64 or osx-arm64.

Inspect the file-based output

After publishing, the output is located in:
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@meaghanlewis meaghanlewis Jan 16, 2026

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File-based apps is a feature that's only available since .NET 10.

The default location of the executable is in an artifacts directory next to the .cs file: https://learn.microsoft.com/dotnet/core/sdk/file-based-apps

bin/Release/net8.0/win-x64/publish/

In this folder, you’ll find a single executable file:

HelloWorld.exe (Windows)

HelloWorld (Linux or macOS)

This executable contains the application, its dependencies, and the .NET runtime. You can
copy this file to another machine and run it without installing .NET.

## Additional resources

- [.NET application publishing overview](../deploying/index.md)
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