You can build .NET Core either via the command line or by using Visual Studio.
- Visual Studio must be installed. Supported versions:
- Visual Studio 2015 (Community, Professional, Enterprise). The Community version is completely free.
- Visual Studio 2017 (Community, Professional, Enterprise). The Community version is completely free.
- CMake must be installed from the CMake download page and added to your path.
- Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 is required.
- You must select Programming Languages | Visual C++ | Common Tools for Visual C++ 2015 while installing VS 2015 (or modify your install to include it).
The following are the minimum requirements:
- .NET desktop development
- All Required Components
- .NET Framework 4-4.6 Development Tools
- Desktop development with C++
- All Required Components
- VC++ 2017 v141 Toolset (x86, x64)
- Windows 8.1 SDK and UCRT SDK
- VC++ 2015.3 v140 Toolset (x86, x64)
- .NET Core cross-platform development
- All Required Components
Note: If you have both VS 2017 and 2015 installed, you need to copy DIA SDK directory from VS 2015 installation into VS 2017 (VS installer bug).
The following are the minimum requirements:
- C# and Visual Basic Roslyn Compilers
- Static Analysis Tools
- .NET Portable Library Targeting Pack
- Windows 10 SDK or Windows 8.1 SDK
- Visual Studio C++ Core Features
- VC++ 2017 v141 Toolset (x86, x64)
- MSBuild
- .NET Framework 4.6 Targeting Pack
- Windows Universal CRT SDK
- VC++ 2015.3 v140 Toolset (x86, x64)
You must use the Developer Command Prompt. It will have a name like "Developer Command Prompt for VS 2017" or similar in your start menu.
From a (non-admin) Developer Command Prompt window:
build.cmd
- Will cause basic tool initialization and build the default configuration for refs, libs, and packages.build-tests.cmd
- Will build and run tests for the default configuration.
For information on different configurations see project-guidelines.
Note: Before working on individual projects or test projects you must run build.cmd
from the root once before beginning that work. It is also a good idea to run build.cmd
whenever you pull a large set of unknown changes into your branch.
Visual Studio Solution (.sln) files exist for related groups of libraries. These can be loaded to build, debug and test inside the Visual Studio IDE.
Note that when calling the script build.cmd
attempts to build both the native and managed code.
Only use it when the parameters that you are passing to the script apply for both components. Otherwise, use the scripts build-native.cmd
and build-managed.cmd
respectively.
For more information about the different options when building, run build.cmd -?
and look at examples in the developer-guide.
From the root, use build-tests.cmd
.
For more details, or to test an individual project, see the developer guide topic.
- Open solution of interest
- Right click test project and select 'Set as startup project'
- Ctrl+F5 (Run)
- Install VS 2015 Preview or later including Web Developer Tools
- Open solution of interest in VS 2015
- Right click test project and select 'Set as startup project'
- Set breakpoint appropriately
- F5 (Debug)
Once you've built the source code for netfx from the root (build.cmd -framework:netfx
) follow these steps:
- Build test project with the following parameters
msbuild /t:buildandtest /p:targetgroup=netfx /p:testdebugger=devenv.exe
. This will open Visual Studio with the runner as startup project and its corresponding arguments. - Open project properties and fill in the next information:
- Debugger Type -> Managed (v4.6, v4.5, v4.0)
- Environment -> you need to add an environment variable as follows:
- DEVPATH ->
<corefxpath>\bin\testhost\netfx-Windows_NT-Debug-x64\
- DEVPATH ->
- Set breakpoint appropriately
- F5 (Debug)
For advanced debugging using WinDBG see Debugging CoreFX on Windows
-
At any given time, the corefx repo might be configured to use a more recent compiler than the one used by the most recent Visual Studio IDE release. This means the corefx codebase might be using language features that are not understood by the IDE, which might result in errors that show up as red squiggles while writing code. Such errors should, however, not affect the actual compilation.
-
Running tests from using the VS test explorer does not currently work after we switched to running on CoreCLR. We will be working on enabling full VS test integration but we don't have an ETA yet. In the meantime, use the steps above to launch/debug the tests using the console runner.
-
VS 2015 is required to debug tests running on CoreCLR as the CoreCLR debug engine is a VS 2015 component.
-
If the Xamarin PCL profiles are installed, the build will fail due to issue #449. A possible workaround is listed in the issue itself.