PublishSelfContained should not do a self-contained build

[sbomer]

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
    <TargetFramework>net8.0</TargetFramework>
    <ImplicitUsings>enable</ImplicitUsings>
    <Nullable>enable</Nullable>
    <PublishSelfContained>true</PublishSelfContained>
  </PropertyGroup>

</Project>

Run dotnet publish.

The output in ./bin/Release/net8.0/linux-x64/publish is self-contained, as expected. What's unexpected is that the build output in /bin/Release/net8.0/linux-x64 is also self-contained. This is true even if I add <SelfContained>false</SelfContained>.

[nagilson]

Hm, that's a really good point. We're (the SDK and MSBuild team) going to talk about this a bit more tomorrow as there are some things I'm unsure of here

[nagilson]

To our understanding, the publish output relies on the build output. If we wanted to make the build not SelfContained, then we would have to build a 2nd time in SelfContained for the publish to be SelfContained. (Or re-write publish.)

[marcpopMSFT]

The publish requires a build happening first. We could potentially not copy the buld outputs and instead copy from Intermediate output direct to publish but I think the only benefit is a size benefit. CC @dsplaisted if he has other thoughts on this.

[dsplaisted]

Yes, the self-contained publish depends on a self-contained build. We could probably try to untangle that, but I suspect it would be tricky.

[sbomer]

It makes sense that publish depends on having built the user code - but I don't think it makes sense to copy the self-contained dependencies to both the build and publish folders.

The size issue is significant and was the motivation for #32272. I'd argue that there's also a correctness issue - if I specifically set PublishSelfContained, I expect that the build output is not self-contained. But if I do dotnet publish then dotnetn build -c Release, the self-contained build output is left over from running dotnet publish. And I don't think it would be good to fix that by making dotnet build -c Release clean the output folder - those files shouldn't be there in the first place.

@richlander

[richlander]

@agocke