Hacker News Reader

Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

I don’t get it. How can one executable even know how to bootstrap itself enough to know how to run a self extracting archive across Windows,MacOS,Linux?

I understand how MS did it in the past with DOS/Windows and how Apple has done it between the 68K/PPC/Intel transitions.

View on HN

The current version of `dotnet publish` allows you to specify a runtime identifier. It then proceeds to produce an executable for that runtime.

I understand that. But you still have to tell it which runtime to use even though you can build a Windows standalone distribution on Linux and vice versa.

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.

That's not exactly what they're saying. In the quote above, they are talking about framework independence, not platform independence. The wrapper executables are still platform specific, but framework independent. However the actual .NET modules in the package are platform independent, but framework specific. They can be executed without the wrapper executable by installing the correct framework yourself.

Thanks.

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.'

Reply on news.ycombinator.com