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Automatic RuntimeIdentifier for publish only

  • Article

In the 7.0.100 SDK, there was a change to automatically add <RuntimeIdentifier> to projects with properties that require a runtime identifier (RID). Those properties are as follows:

  • SelfContained
  • PublishAot
  • PublishReadyToRun
  • PublishSingleFile
  • PublishSelfContained

However, all of these properties except for SelfContained are only used for publishing. Yet the implicit <RuntimeIdentifier> was added for any dotnet operation if these properties were in the project file or specified as part of the dotnet command.

Now, the automatic RID for these properties, excluding SelfContained, is only added during publish. In addition, the automatic RID is only added when using the dotnet publish CLI command. It's not added when you publish from Visual Studio or msbuild, as those are separate mechanisms, and Visual Studio should provide its own RID.

Version introduced

.NET 7.0.200 SDK

Previous behavior

Previously, if you specified any of the mentioned properties, the RID was automatically added to the project.

New behavior

The RID is only automatically added for the dotnet publish command.

If you performed a restore without an RID in .NET 7 and use it to restore for a publish --no-restore command on a project with one of the mentioned properties, you'll need to specify an RID using dotnet restore -r <RID>.

Type of breaking change

This change can affect binary compatibility and source compatibility.

Reason for change

The RID change was a breaking change, and there was no need for a publish property change to break dotnet build and other non-publish-related commands.

For an action like restore followed by publish --no-restore, you must add the RID by using dotnet restore -r RID. In this case, it's also better to be explicit when you publish so the publish has the same RID (using dotnet publish -r RID). Alternatively, you can remove --no-restore from the publish command.

For everything else, no action is needed. However, if you want to keep the RID, add it to the project file as follows: <RuntimeIdentifier>win-x64</RuntimeIdentifier>.

See also