Asmichi.InjectNativeFileDepsHack 0.1.0

Asmichi.InjectNativeFileDepsHack

An insane hack to inject runtime assets into deps.json by injecting RuntimeTargetsCopyLocalItems items into the GenerateDepsFile task.

This library can be obtained via NuGet.

Background

By default (without DllImportSearchPath.AssemblyDirectory), the .NET runtime only loads native DLLs listed in the deps.json of an application. There is a long-standing issue: deps.json does not list native DLLs from reference projects (only native DLLs from NuGet packages), which means that such native DLLs cannot be loaded:

• https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/issues/765 Copy runtime libraries from references project
• https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/issues/1088 Allow runtime-specific assets in the project
• https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/issues/24708 Architecture-specific folders like runtimes/<rid>/native/ outside of NuGet packages [nativeinterop]

So, if you develop a library containing native DLLs, you get stuck. The test projects and sample projects will project-reference the library project, which does not work!

WARNING

Again, this is an insane hack that plays with the implementation details deep inside the .NET SDK. It is likely that this will break even by a minor version update of the .NET SDK.

Tested on the following versions of the .NET SDK:

• 6.0.301

Usage

List the native files as InjectNativeFileDepsHack items.

  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="Asmichi.InjectNativeFileDepsHack" Version="0.1.0" PrivateAssets="all" IncludeAssets="runtime;build;native;contentfiles;analyzers" />
  </ItemGroup>

  <ItemGroup>
    <InjectNativeFileDepsHack Include="$(OutputPath)runtimes\linux-x64\native\libMyAwesomeLibrary.so">
      
      <DestinationSubDirectory>runtimes\linux-x64\native\libMyAwesomeLibrary.so</DestinationSubDirectory>
      
      <RuntimeIdentifier>linux-x64</RuntimeIdentifier>
    </InjectNativeFileDepsHack>
  </ItemGroup>

Notes:

• Normally you list the native DLLs as Content items in the library project, so the native DLLs should be copied into $(OutputPath).
• You cannot use wildcards in Include to list files within output directories because these wild cards are evaluated before the build starts and thus output files do not yet exist.