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Bootstrapping Guidelines to Build .NET from Source

.NET utilizes itself to build therefore in order to build .NET from source, you first need to acquire or build a bootstrapping .NET SDK. This document provides guidance around acquiring and building this bootstrapping .NET SDK.

The version of the SDK used to source build .NET is referred to as "N-1" (e.g. 8.0.100). The version of the SDK produced by source build is referred to as "N" (e.g. 8.0.101). The previous SDK (e.g. N-1) supplies the tools required to build.

For new major versions or new platforms, you need to acquire or build the bootstrapping SDK as you cannot use a previous source-built SDK. This is to say you cannot use a 8.0 version of the SDK to build a 9.0 SDK.

Bootstrapping typically requires an exception in the distro packaging guidelines (e.g. Fedora Bootstrapping Guidelines).

Refer to the build instructions to review how to build the .NET SDK from source.

Scenarios

There are three major scenarios for bootstrapping:

  1. Building on a supported platform (Using RID known to .NET)
  2. Building for New OS (Using a RID unknown to .NET)
  3. Building for New Architecture (Using a RID unknown to .NET)

Building on a supported platform (Using RID known to .NET)

To find out if your platform is supported you must first determine its RID. You can then check if it's supported by looking at the RID graph in the runtime.json.

Building .NET for the first time is a two stage process:

Stage 1: Build bootstrapping .NET SDK for the targeted platform.

  1. Download a platform-native portable Microsoft-built version of the dotnet SDK for bootstrapping as well as the previously-source-built package archive.

    ./prep-source-build.sh

  2. Build the source built .NET SDK.

    ./build.sh --source-only

Stage 2: Use the source-built .NET SDK and source-built artifacts created in stage 1 to build .NET SDK from source.

  1. Extract your freshly-built stage 1 SDK to a convenient location.

    tar -ozxf /<stage1-path>/artifacts/assets/Release/dotnet-sdk-<version>-<rid>-tar.gz -C <extracted-stage1-sdk-path>

  2. Extract your freshly-built stage 1 source-built artifacts to a convenient location.

    tar -ozxf /<stage1-path>/artifacts/assets/Release/Private.SourceBuilt.Artifacts.<version>-<rid>-.tar.gz -C <extracted-stage1-artifacts-path>

  3. Prep the build.

    ./prep-source-build.sh --no-sdk --no-artifacts --with-sdk <extracted-stage1-sdk-path> --with-packages <extracted-stage1-artifacts-path>

  4. Build the source built .NET SDK.

    ./build.sh --source-only --with-sdk <extracted-stage1-sdk-path> --with-packages <extracted-stage1-artifacts-path>

Building for New OS (Using a RID unknown to .NET)

Building for an OS that Microsoft does not currently build the SDK for is possible but requires more work. If Microsoft produces a portable SDK for your platform (e.g. amd64 and arm64), you can follow the two-step process below.

RIDs:

The RID graph or runtime fallback graph is a list of RIDs that are compatible with each other. You can see the list of supported RIDs and the RID graph in the runtime.json. Learn more about RID catalog here.

If a compatible RID is found, you can use a compatible supported OS as host to build. Choose a host with same processor architecture as that of the new targeted platform. If you choose this option, the RID of the resulting SDK will be that of the host. If this is acceptable follow the instructions in Building on a supported platform (Using RID known to .NET) using a compatible host OS.

If no compatible RID is found or you want a RID specific SDK use the folloring the steps (works for .NET 6, but requires validation for .NET 7):

Stage 0:

  1. Get Microsoft portable SDK.
  2. Update the RID graph (runtime.json) in the Microsoft-built portable SDK with the same changes you will make below to add your new RID to the RID graph. This should include a fallback to the portable RID (linux-x64 or similar).

Stage 1:

  1. Update the RID graph in source with the same changes made in Stage 0. For an example, see dotnet/runtime#74372.
  2. Build with Stage 0 SDK using --with-sdk with your modified portable SDK. See the Stage 1 instructions in Building on a supported platform (Using RID known to .NET).

Stage 2:

  1. Now you have a RID-specific SDK that knows about your new RID, build with Stage 1 SDK as done in Building on a supported platform (Using RID known to .NET).

Building for New Architecture (Using a RID unknown to .NET)

Building for an architecture that Microsoft does not currently build the SDK for is possible but requires more work.

RIDs:

The RID graph or runtime fallback graph is a list of RIDs that are compatible with each other. You can see the list of supported RIDs and the RID graph in the runtime.json. Learn more about RID catalog in here.

You will need to update the RID graph to include your new platform and runtime IDs. See dotnet/runtime#82382 or dotnet/runtime#75396 for examples.

Building for unsupported architectures require cross-compilaton on the supported platform. Determine the compatible host to build which provides cross-compilation toolchain. IBM has published a detailed description of how they successfully built .NET 7 for IBM Power.

While this is a more complicated scenario that may differ from platform to platform, the steps will be roughly:

Stage 0:

  1. Cross compile an SDK (using prebuilts) on x64 for target platform (this process may be quite long and involved and include setting up a rootfs for your architecture).
  2. Cross compile the runtime repo (on x64 for target platform, generally done as part of previous step) and save the nuget packages, use these to augment the Microsoft-built previously-source-built archive.

Stage 1:

  1. Use the cross-compiled SDK and augmented previously-source-built-archive to build a stage 1 SDK. See the Stage 1 instructions in Building on a supported platform (Using RID known to .NET).

Stage 2:

  1. Use your stage 1 SDK to build a stage 2 SDK, pointing it to the SDK and previously-source-built archives from stage 1. See the Stage 2 instructions in Building on a supported platform (Using RID known to .NET).

Building a Servicing Release of .NET

Building a subsequent or servicing version of .NET requires that you have source built the previous version of .NET available as descibed in one of the building scenarios. Once you have a previous verion of the .NET SDK available, all you have to do is run the following build command.

./build.sh --source-only --with-sdk <extracted-previously-source-built-sdk-path> --with-packages <extracted-previously-source-built-packages-path>