In passing, I will note that there is "mono", which is an open source clone of .NET. It used to include an IDE "monodevelop", which was abandoned, but now taken up as "dotdevelop". But I don't know anything about all of this, nor have I fiddled with it.
This little adventure is me seeing how far I can get with it without watching endless videos and such. I type "code" and indeed it launches. It tells me that it sees that I have Docker installed and offers to set up Docker plugins. I have no idea why I should want that, so I am going to try to ignore or bypass it for now. Actually I change my mind and for no particular reason tell it to go ahead and install "Dev Containers". It seems to take only seconds.
The left edge of "code" offers various things, including "extensions", which is what activated to try to lure me into this docker business. The topmost of these is "explorer" and I switch to that.
Just for the record, here is a simple "hello world" in C#. Looks a lot like Java.
// Hello World! program
namespace HelloWorld
{
class Hello {
static void Main(string[] args)
{
System.Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");
}
}
}
I use File->New to create a new file, put it into /home/tom/C# and call it "hello".
I copy and paste the above content into it. Apparently "cs" is the expected extension
for C# files, so I should have called this "hello.cs". I exit from code, and rename
the file using the linux "mv" command. I restart code and it now asks me if I want to
install the recommended extension for C#. I click the "Install" button for this.
I see a progress bar and it puts me again into the "extensions" thing.
It is now telling me I need the .NET Core SDK, which makes sense.
I click on "Get the SDK".
I takes me to a page on my browser:
It is offering me .NET 7.0 SDK and the browser has a button "Install for Linux". This takes me to a page with lots of options, including "packages for Fedora", when I select that, it takes me to this page: If you want to develop apps, you want the SDK. If you just want to run apps, the "runtime" will do. There is a command line tool "dotnet" that will tell you what you have installed via: "dotnet --list-sdks". If I already had some .NET installed this would work, but the command is not found (as one would expect).su dnf install dotnet-sdk-7.0 Last metadata expiration check: 2:54:58 ago on Wed 21 Jun 2023 11:20:19 AM MST. Dependencies resolved. ================================================================================ Package Arch Version Repository Size ================================================================================ Installing: dotnet-sdk-7.0 x86_64 7.0.105-1.fc38 updates 85 M Installing dependencies: aspnetcore-runtime-7.0 x86_64 7.0.5-1.fc38 updates 7.3 M aspnetcore-targeting-pack-7.0 x86_64 7.0.5-1.fc38 updates 1.6 M dotnet-apphost-pack-7.0 x86_64 7.0.5-1.fc38 updates 3.9 M dotnet-host x86_64 7.0.5-1.fc38 updates 197 k dotnet-hostfxr-7.0 x86_64 7.0.5-1.fc38 updates 166 k dotnet-runtime-7.0 x86_64 7.0.5-1.fc38 updates 24 M dotnet-targeting-pack-7.0 x86_64 7.0.5-1.fc38 updates 2.7 M dotnet-templates-7.0 x86_64 7.0.105-1.fc38 updates 2.7 M netstandard-targeting-pack-2.1 x86_64 7.0.105-1.fc38 updates 1.3 M Transaction Summary ================================================================================ Install 10 Packages Total download size: 129 M Installed size: 465 MAfter this (it all seems to work), I can use the "dotnet" command:
dotnet --list-sdks 7.0.105 [/usr/lib64/dotnet/sdk]As a quick side note. The newly installed "dotnet" command is /usr/lib64/dotnet/dotnet. The /usr/lib64/dotnet directory was newly created -- a bit of an odd way to do things on linux, but harmless I guess. /usr/bin/dotnet is just a link to this.
And further satisfying my curiousity, "code" is a link as follows:
/usr/bin/code -> /usr/share/code/bin/code
I monkey around a bit with VS code, but don't see any way to tell it to compile (and run) my program.
Now I am somewhat confused -- I haven't paid microsoft for C# and don't intend to. It also isn't clear how to "connect my account" at least there doesn't seem to be any button to start the process.
dotnet new console -o hello cd hello dotnet runAnd indeed it prints "Hello, World!"
The Program.cs it generated for me, contains a comment line and one line of code, as follows:
// See https://aka.ms/new-console-template for more information
Console.WriteLine("Hello, World!");
This is interesting, and not at all what I expected.
But it does achieve my goal of running a C# program on linux.
It is worth noting that there is something called "mono" which seems to be an open source implementation (clone?) of the .NET framework. That offers an entirely different path to all of this.
You can type "dotnet new --help" to get help on that specific command. (Hence also "dotnet run --help" is interesting.
Typing "dotnet new list" gives a list of all the installed "templates", including the console template that I used above.
mkdir C# cd C# dotnet new console -o console2Now I got into this project and replace the "one line" Program.cs with the typical hello world code, with a couple of extra lines added -- namely this:
namespace HelloWorld
{
class Hello {
static void Main(string[] args)
{
System.Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");
System.Console.WriteLine("Hello Amigos!!");
System.Console.WriteLine("Goodbye, for now anyway.");
}
}
}
I type "dotnet run" and it works!
Well, I have achieved my goal -- starting with source and running a C# program on my linux machine. Lots of black box though, but it is a starting point.
Here are some other sources of information. Apparently "dotnet" expects you to be working from whatever it is they call a "project". You don't just create a directory and throw some ".cs" files into it and then run the compiler by hand (or using your own build system).
Tom's Computer Info / tom@mmto.org