>You can now publish a single-file executable with `dotnet publish`. This form of single EXE is effectively a self-extracting executable. It contains all dependencies, including native dependencies, as resources. At startup, it copies all dependencies to a temp directory, and loads them for there. It only needs to unpack dependencies once. After that, startup is fast, without any penalty.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/announcing-net-core-3-...
[1] https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/issues/20287#issuecomment-...
> Starting with .NET Core 2.2, you can deploy your app as an FDE, along with any required third-party dependencies. Your app will use the version of .NET Core that's installed on the target system.
> Your app can be run by calling the published executable without invoking the dotnet utility directly.
> The term is based on the perceived process of harvesting fruit, such as cherries. The picker would be expected to only select the ripest and healthiest fruits. An observer who only sees the selected fruit may thus wrongly conclude that most, or even all, of the tree's fruit is in a likewise good condition. This can also give a false impression of the quality of the fruit (since it is only a sample and is not a representative sample).
Source Wikipedia.
I understand how MS did it in the past with DOS/Windows and how Apple has done it between the 68K/PPC/Intel transitions.
They seem to implying that you can create one executable that you can distribute and it will be able to extract the needed parts on any supported platform.
And as much as people complain about Microsoft's messaging with respect to .Net, there isn't really a simple way to explain any of this -- even to people who are deep into the .Net ecosystem. I feel their pain.'