• Spyros@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    Does it effectively output a single binary?

    Yes, that’s one of the points of NativeAOT, a self-contained single binary, exactly as Go does it.

    Does it create some kind of clusterf*k and awkward packaging formats like other MS solutions such as UWP?

    No, you can create .exe files.

    Will it actually be deployable to a random fresh install of Debian 12 or Windows 10?

    Yes, NativeAOT supports Windows, Linux and MacOS, x64 and Arm64.

    What about compatibility with older systems?

    Not sure about that, I suppose it depends on the targets each .NET version support. For example, .NET 8 will drop RHEL 7 and only RHEL 8 and later.

    And to play devil’s advocate: this won’t work for all existing .NET applications. If you use reflection (which is AOT unfriendly), chances are that you will have to rework a ton of stuff in order to get to a point where NativeAOT works. There’s a middle solution though, called ReadyToRun, which has some advantages compared to running fully with the JIT compiler.

    • TCB13@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Thank you for the link, so --self-contained will results in “a folder that has our exe and everything that is required to run it (…) a little over 200 files” while /p:PublishSingleFile=true will result in a 70MB file for a simple hello world. This kind of confirms my cheap satire :D it is nice this is an option now but the mess and size is crazy. Statically built Qt programs for Windows, with a GUI, are usually around 10MB for a simple app.

      • tcm@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’m pretty sure that 70MB is including the entire .NET standard library, which is massive. Enabling NativeAOT or trimming reduces the size down to a few MB

      • PixxlMan@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I just don’t get the obsession with small executable file sizes. 100 MB here and there hasn’t mattered at all in desktop development for many years. Feels like arbitrary goals set up just to be able to say “look there are still uses for [unmanaged language]”. And of course there are, but a 60 MB smaller executables on a desktop with several terabytes of storage just isn’t one of them. And no, developer, about to comment about how you’ve only got 5 millibits of storage on your embedded system, we’re not talking about that.