Create an exe on publish in a .NET core project in VS2017

Question

I created a console application in .NET Core 2 and wanted to make it an executable file (so I don't have to launch it via Visual Studio 2017). The problem is that publishing the file into a local folder does not do that, there are DLL files, but no EXE.

I know how to do it when creating a .NET Core Console application by command line . I created a separate simple project and used

dotnet build -r win10-x64

My problem is that I want to publish my application from Visual Studio 2017. I'm trying to achieve that but with no results. How can I do that?

Answer 1

Command Line

• dotnet publish -c release -r win10-x64

• Replace win10-x64 with any other supported platform identifier

VS2017

• On the specific publish profile, click configure (next to target location). You must create the profile first - the UI is not intuitive on this.
• Select a Target Runtime from the list.
• To add more options to the list, add <RuntimeIdentifiers>linux-x64;win7-x64</RuntimeIdentifiers> to some <PropertyGroup /> in the .csproj file with a list of extra identifiers.