Prevent package creation when executing dotnet build command

[thomasphillipsgb]

Hi there,

I have a suite of MAUI apps making use of a few shared projects, I would like to setup a CI which would build all the apps and run unit tests for the shared libraries when changes are in PR. Coming from XF, our CI would call 'msbuild' where dlls would be produced for the app projects, and unit test projects, where the test runner would execute the tests. This had fast build times as platform specific package creation was skipped.

Migrating to MAUI, calling the dotnet build command (and dotnet test) begin invoking targets specific to the platform (e.g, _CreateBaseApkWithAapt2, _CompileToDavlik, _RunILLink, _AOTCompile, _CodesignAppBundle, etc...), and subsequently go on to still produce an .apk/.ipa. This is causing prolonged and slower build times, which in the end, is not needed.

Running through the documentation for Deployment & testing nothing seems to highlight this will be the case, nor indicate how to prevent this from happening.

One post on StackOverflow stated to use /p:AndroidBuildApplicationPackage=false when using net6.0 ref. but doesnt seem to do the trick for net9.0 targeted projects.

I was curious if anyone else had an issue with this, or if it is intended that the dotnet build will create packages, or if there is a project property / build target I can leverage which skips these steps?