net6.0-macos publish creating .pkg file instead of .app

[natan-abolafya]

Is this possible? We have been using the output of dotnet build for this but I'd like to try trimming to lower the artifact size. But when I change to dotnet publish it produces a pkg file instead. Is there a flag that I can use?

I came across this https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/maui/macos/deployment/overview and tried /p:CreatePackage=false but that didn't help. It's not a MAUI project either anyway.

[vitek-karas]

What type of app are you building? (console, ASP.NET, ...)
What is the publish command?
Is it an "application" (OutputType=exe)?

[vitek-karas]

I forgot to mention that publish on a normal console app should not produce .app either. I would expect it to produce a directory with all the necessary files in it - including the executable.

[natan-abolafya]

ah, good to know. thanks.

[natan-abolafya]

Sorry, I was mistaken about Console application. Rider says Console application but it is

<TargetFramework>net6.0-macos</TargetFramework>

When I tested with net6.0, it behaved like you said. But with net6.0-macos it creates a package with this name <project-name>-1.0.1..pkg under the publish folder. Yes double dots at the end.

Here is a small csproj file where you can create a file with Main and try out.

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
    <PropertyGroup>
        <OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
        <TargetFramework>net6.0-macos</TargetFramework>
        <ApplicationId>com.example.app</ApplicationId>
        <RuntimeIdentifier>osx-arm64</RuntimeIdentifier>
        <SupportedOSPlatformVersion>10.15</SupportedOSPlatformVersion>
    </PropertyGroup>
</Project>

[vitek-karas]

I actually don't know why that's happening. Could you please open an issue in the dotnet/sdk repo? That's where this area lives.

[natan-abolafya]

Done dotnet/sdk#27841. Thanks for the help.

[NN---]

I use DotnetBundle package to build app.
Didn’t know dotnet tool is capable to perform this.