dotnet / dotnet/aspnetcore

Ship ASP.NET Core bootstrapper packages with Visual Studio

Open
#67,381 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
area-infrastructure
Dominant language
C#
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Description

### Is there an existing issue for this?

- [x] I have searched the existing issues

### Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe the problem.

We have two .NET desktop apps communicating via gRPC. We are currently migrating from `Grpc.Core` to `grpc-dotnet` (see [The future of gRPC in C# belongs to grpc-dotnet](https://grpc.io/blog/grpc-csharp-future/)). The `Grpc.AspNetCore.Server` package obviously uses ASP.NET Core as server.

We also use Visual Studio Installer Projects to ship our application. However, ASP.NET Core cannot be selected as prerequisite because no bootstrapper package for ASP.NET Core is shipped with Visual Studio. Creating my own bootstrapper package is possible, but the system files or system registry has to be modified and kept up to date on each developer's PC which is a nightmare in a shared repo with ~20 developers working on it.

### Describe the solution you'd like

The other bootstrapper packages are shipped with the `Microsoft.Net.Core.BootstrapperPackages` package which I couldn't find publicly on GitHub. So ASP.NET Core should be added there. I hope this place is ok to suggest this feature, but I guess you have to route it to the respective team.

I think using gRPC for IPC on the desktop is a valid use case. As ASP.NET Core gets adopted more and more like in this case, there will be use cases where it is not run as part of IIS or something similar, but standalone on the desktop.

### Additional context

_No response_

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by investigating the Microsoft.Net.Core.BootstrapperPackages package and how Visual Studio Installer Projects discover prerequisite bootstrapper packages. Confirm what ASP.NET Core standalone desktop installation requires and define how the package should be shipped with Visual Studio; done means ASP.NET Core is selectable as a prerequisite without each developer maintaining local files or registry entries.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
csharp
Domain
build-system, tooling
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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