Publish a .NET AOT project for Linux on a Windows host using Docker

publish-linux-aot.ps1

<#
  Copyright © 2025 Guiorgy

  This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
  the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
  Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later
  version.

  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
  ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
  FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

  You can see the full GNU General Public License at
  <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/> for more details.
#>

# Check whether Docker is running
docker version *>$null
if (-not $?) {
  Write-Error "Docker is not running"
  exit 1
}

# Define the project parameters
$csproj = Get-ChildItem -Filter *.csproj | Select-Object -First 1
$project = $csproj.Basename
$sdk_version = '9'
$container = "$project-net-dev-$sdk_version"

# Define the volume mapping
$host_dir = $PWD.Path
$container_dir = "/usr/src/${project}"

# Ensure that the sdk container is available and configured
docker container inspect "$container" *>$null
if (-not $?) {
  # Ensure the sdk image is available
  $sdk = 'mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/sdk:$sdk_version.0'
  docker image inspect $sdk *>$null
  if (-not $?) {
    Write-Output "Pulling $sdk"
    docker pull $sdk
  }

  # Create the container with correct volume mappings
  Write-Output "Creating container `"$container`""
  docker run -d --name "$container" -v "${host_dir}:${container_dir}" $sdk sh -c 'trap "exit 0" TERM; tail -f /dev/null & wait'

  # Install dependencies
  Write-Output "Installing dependencies: Clang, zlib"
  docker exec -it "$container" bash -c 'apt-get -qq update && apt-get -qq install clang zlib1g-dev'

  # Stop container
  docker stop "$container" *>$null
}

try {
  # Start container
  docker start $container *>$null

  # Run dotnet publish inside the container
  Write-Output "Publishing"
  docker exec -w "$container_dir" "$container" dotnet publish -r linux-x64 -c Release $csproj.Name
} finally {
  # Stop container
  docker stop "$container" *>$null
}

Notes

The script assumes that the script and the project to be published are both in the root directory of the solution.

If the target project is in a subdirectory, then modify the following:

• Remove the line defining $csproj
• Set the value of $project to the name of the project (no spaces)
• Change the $csproj.Name argument inside the docker exec command to the relative path to the .csproj file of the target project (surround it with quotes if the path contains spaces)

If the script is in a subdirectory, then, allong with the above, modify the following:

• set the value of $host_dir to the path to the solution direcory

---

The script assumes that the target framework is .NET 9.0, if this is not the case, then change the value of the $sdk_version variable. You can find the full list of available .NET tags here.