A Quick Startup Using .NET Core On Linux

I know you may be thinking … This post is another rhetoric post by"that guy" and you are right .NET Core is another product that I like, the first one of its kind. It was last year when .NET Core started and Microsoft said they are going to release the source code as a part of their open source environment. By following the open source project environment and ethics, Microsoft has been working very hard in bringing global developers towards their environments, platforms, and services. For example, .NET framework works on Windows, C# language is used to build Windows Store applications, C# is also the primary language in Microsoft’s Web Application development framework, ASP.NET and much more. The online Cloud Service of Microsoft is also programmed in C#; primarily. These things are interrelated to each other. Thus, when Microsoft brings all of this as an open source project, things start to get a lot better!

Everyone knows about the background of .NET Core and if you don’t know, I recommend that you read the blog post on Microsoft, Introducing .NET Core. The(ir) basic idea was to provide a framework that would work with any platform, any application type and any framework to be targeted.

Introduction and Background

In this post, I will help you learn how to get started with .NET Core and how to install it on a Linux machine and I will also give my views as to what is the need to install .NET Core on a Linux machine instead of Windows machine, I will then walk you through different steps of .NET Core programming and how you can use a terminal-based environment to perform multiple tasks.

I am sure that you have heard of .NET Core and other cool stuff that Microsoft has been releasing these years. Out of all of the services, the ones that I like are:

1. C# 6
   
   a. In my own opinion, I think the language looks cleaner now. These sugar-coated features make the language easier to write too. If you haven’t yet read it, please read my previous blog post, Experimenting with C# 6’s new features.
   
   
2. .NET Core
   
   a. Of course, who wouldn’t love to use .NET on the other platforms?
   
   
3. Xamarin acquisition
   
   a. I’m going to try this one out tonight. Fingers crossed.
   
   
4. The rest are all just the “usual” stuff around.

In this post, I am going to talk about .NET Core on Linux because I have already talked about the C# stuff.


Figure 1: .NET Core is a cross-platform programming framework by Microsoft

Why Linux for .NET Core?

Before I dive any deeper, I will provide a few of my considerations for using .NET Core on Linux and not on Windows (yet!). You don’t have to take them seriously or to always consider them, they are just my views and my opinions and you are free to have your own.

.NET Core is not yet complete

It would take a while before .NET releases a Public stable version. Until then, using this bleeding edge technology on your own machines won’t be a good idea and someday sooner you will consider removing the binaries. In such cases, it is always better to use it in the virtual machine somewhere. I have set up a few Linux (Ubuntu-based) virtual machines for my development purposes and I recommend that you go the same way.

1. Install VirtualBox (or any other virtualization software that you prefer; I like VirtualBox for its simplicity).
   
   
2. Set up an Ubuntu environment.
   
   a. Remember to use Ubuntu 14.04. Later ones are not yet supported.
   
   
3. Install the .NET Core on that machine.

If something goes wrong then you can easily revert back where you want to. If the code plays dirty, you don’t have to worry about your data or your machine at all.

Everything is command-line

Windows OS is not your OS, if you like command-line interfaces. I am waiting for the BASH language to be introduced in Windows as in Ubuntu, until then, I am not able to use anything that requires a command-line interface to be used on my Windows environment. In Linux, however, almost everything has a command-line interface and since the .NET Core is a command-based program by Microsoft I have enjoyed using it on Linux as compared to Windows.

Besides, on command-line interfaces, creating, building and running a .NET Core project is as simple as 1… 2… 3. You’ll see how, in the sections below.

I don’t use Mac

Besides these points, the only valid point left is then why shouldn’t we use Mac OS for .NET Core is because I don’t use it. You are free to use Mac OS for .NET Core development too. .NET Core supports it but I don’t support that development environment.

Installation of .NET Core

Although it is intended that soon, the command will be as simple as:

1. Create a package
   
   
2. Restore the package
   
   
3. Run the package
   
   a. Build and Run both work, run would execute, build would just build the project. That was easy.
   
   
4. Packaging the package

I will make it easy to make it even more clear and simple to understand. One thing that you must have figured out is that the option to compile the project natively is not provided as an explicit command in this set of options. As far as I can think, this support has been removed.

Using .NET Core on Linux

Although the procedure on both the environments is similar and alike, I am going to show you the procedure in Ubuntu. Moreover, I will be explaining the purpose of these commands and multiple options that .NET provides you. I don’t want you to feel lonely here, because most of the paragraphs here would be for Microsoft team working on .NET project, so I will be providing a few suggestions for the team too but, don’t worry, I’ll make sure the content seems to be accurate and to the point.

Create a new project

I agree that the framework development is not yet near releasing. Therefore, I think, I should pass on my own suggestions for the project too. At the moment, .NET Core supports creating a new project in the directory and uses the name of the directory as the default name (if at all required). Beginners in .NET Core are only aware of the commands that come right after the “.NET”. However, there are other parameters that collect a few more parameters and optional values such as:

1. Type of project.
   
   a. Executable
   - At the moment, .NET only generates DLL files as an output. Console is the default.
   c. Dynamic-link library
   
   
2. Language to be used for programming.