Skip to main content

Publish a console app as a single executable

I created a small console application that automatically adds the application pool users on your local IIS server to the correct groups on the web server so that performance counter data is correctly send to Application Insights.

You can find some extra content, the original announcement and the source code here:

So what is the reason for this post?

When you publish the tool, it resulted in a combination of an exe and multiple DLL’s:


This means that you need to copy all these files to be able to run the tool. It would be nice if there was only a single executable.

Let’s see how to get this done…

Switch to single file publish

Open up the csproj file and add the following line:

The resulting csproj file looks like this:

If we now try to publish our application again through dotnet publish we only have a single executable:

Remark: Notice that we also have a runtime identifier set. If you don’t set this, you need to specify this when calling the dotnet publish command, e.g. dotnet publish -r win-x64

We can also get rid of the separate pdb file by changing the debugtype to embedded in the csproj:


More information

Create a single file for application deployment - .NET | Microsoft Learn

Popular posts from this blog

Azure DevOps/ GitHub emoji

I’m really bad at remembering emoji’s. So here is cheat sheet with all emoji’s that can be used in tools that support the github emoji markdown markup: All credits go to rcaviers who created this list.

Kubernetes–Limit your environmental impact

Reducing the carbon footprint and CO2 emission of our (cloud) workloads, is a responsibility of all of us. If you are running a Kubernetes cluster, have a look at Kube-Green . kube-green is a simple Kubernetes operator that automatically shuts down (some of) your pods when you don't need them. A single pod produces about 11 Kg CO2eq per year( here the calculation). Reason enough to give it a try! Installing kube-green in your cluster The easiest way to install the operator in your cluster is through kubectl. We first need to install a cert-manager: kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.14.5/cert-manager.yaml Remark: Wait a minute before you continue as it can take some time before the cert-manager is up & running inside your cluster. Now we can install the kube-green operator: kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kube-green/kube-green/releases/latest/download/kube-green.yaml Now in the namespace where we want t

DevToys–A swiss army knife for developers

As a developer there are a lot of small tasks you need to do as part of your coding, debugging and testing activities.  DevToys is an offline windows app that tries to help you with these tasks. Instead of using different websites you get a fully offline experience offering help for a large list of tasks. Many tools are available. Here is the current list: Converters JSON <> YAML Timestamp Number Base Cron Parser Encoders / Decoders HTML URL Base64 Text & Image GZip JWT Decoder Formatters JSON SQL XML Generators Hash (MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA512) UUID 1 and 4 Lorem Ipsum Checksum Text Escape / Unescape Inspector & Case Converter Regex Tester Text Comparer XML Validator Markdown Preview Graphic Color B