Building and testing .NET

Introduction

This guide shows you how to build, test, and publish a .NET package.

GitHub-hosted runners have a tools cache with preinstalled software, which includes the .NET Core SDK. For a full list of up-to-date software and the preinstalled versions of .NET Core SDK, see software installed on GitHub-hosted runners.

Prerequisites

You should already be familiar with YAML syntax and how it's used with GitHub Actions. For more information, see Workflow syntax for GitHub Actions.

We recommend that you have a basic understanding of the .NET Core SDK. For more information, see Getting started with .NET.

Using a .NET workflow template

To get started quickly, add a workflow template to the .github/workflows directory of your repository.

GitHub provides a workflow template for .NET that should work for most .NET projects. The subsequent sections of this guide give examples of how you can customize this workflow template.

1. On GitHub, navigate to the main page of the repository.

2. Under your repository name, click Actions.

   

3. If you already have a workflow in your repository, click New workflow.

4. The "Choose a workflow" page shows a selection of recommended workflow templates. Search for "dotnet".

5. On the ".NET" workflow, click Configure.

   If you don't find the ".NET" workflow template, copy the following workflow code to a new file called dotnet.yml in the .github/workflows directory of your repository.

   YAML

   name: .NET
   
   on:
     push:
       branches: [ "main" ]
     pull_request:
       branches: [ "main" ]
   
   jobs:
     build:
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
   
       steps:
       - uses: actions/checkout@v4
       - name: Setup .NET
         uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v3
         with:
           dotnet-version: 6.0.x
       - name: Restore dependencies
         run: dotnet restore
       - name: Build
         run: dotnet build --no-restore
       - name: Test
         run: dotnet test --no-build --verbosity normal
   

6. Edit the workflow as required. For example, change the .NET version.

7. Click Commit changes.

Specifying a .NET version

To use a preinstalled version of the .NET Core SDK on a GitHub-hosted runner, use the setup-dotnet action. This action finds a specific version of .NET from the tools cache on each runner, and adds the necessary binaries to PATH. These changes will persist for the remainder of the job.

The setup-dotnet action is the recommended way of using .NET with GitHub Actions, because it ensures consistent behavior across different runners and different versions of .NET. If you are using a self-hosted runner, you must install .NET and add it to PATH. For more information, see the setup-dotnet action.

Using multiple .NET versions

name: dotnet package

on: [push]

jobs:
  build:

    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    strategy:
      matrix:
        dotnet-version: [ '3.1.x', '6.0.x' ]

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Setup dotnet ${{ matrix.dotnet-version }}
        uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v3
        with:
          dotnet-version: ${{ matrix.dotnet-version }}
      # You can test your matrix by printing the current dotnet version
      - name: Display dotnet version
        run: dotnet --version

Using a specific .NET version

You can configure your job to use a specific version of .NET, such as 6.0.22. Alternatively, you can use semantic version syntax to get the latest minor release. This example uses the latest minor release of .NET 6.

    - name: Setup .NET 6.x
      uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v3
      with:
        # Semantic version range syntax or exact version of a dotnet version
        dotnet-version: '6.x'

Installing dependencies

GitHub-hosted runners have the NuGet package manager installed. You can use the dotnet CLI to install dependencies from the NuGet package registry before building and testing your code. For example, the YAML below installs the Newtonsoft package.

steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: Setup dotnet
  uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v3
  with:
    dotnet-version: '6.0.x'
- name: Install dependencies
  run: dotnet add package Newtonsoft.Json --version 12.0.1

Caching dependencies

You can cache NuGet dependencies for future workflows using the optional cache input. For example, the YAML below caches the NuGet global-packages folder, and then installs the Newtonsoft package. A second optional input, cache-dependency-path, can be used to specify the path to a dependency file: packages.lock.json.

For more information, see Caching dependencies to speed up workflows.

steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: Setup dotnet
  uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v3
  with:
    dotnet-version: '6.x'
    cache: true
- name: Install dependencies
  run: dotnet add package Newtonsoft.Json --version 12.0.1

Building and testing your code

You can use the same commands that you use locally to build and test your code. This example demonstrates how to use dotnet build and dotnet test in a job:

steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: Setup dotnet
  uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v3
  with:
    dotnet-version: '6.0.x'
- name: Install dependencies
  run: dotnet restore
- name: Build
  run: dotnet build
- name: Test with the dotnet CLI
  run: dotnet test

Packaging workflow data as artifacts

After a workflow completes, you can upload the resulting artifacts for analysis. For example, you may need to save log files, core dumps, test results, or screenshots. The following example demonstrates how you can use the upload-artifact action to upload test results.

For more information, see Storing and sharing data from a workflow.

name: dotnet package

on: [push]

jobs:
  build:

    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    strategy:
      matrix:
        dotnet-version: [ '3.1.x', '6.0.x' ]

      steps:
        - uses: actions/checkout@v4
        - name: Setup dotnet
          uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v3
          with:
            dotnet-version: ${{ matrix.dotnet-version }}
        - name: Install dependencies
          run: dotnet restore
        - name: Test with dotnet
          run: dotnet test --logger trx --results-directory "TestResults-${{ matrix.dotnet-version }}"
        - name: Upload dotnet test results
          uses: actions/upload-artifact@v3
          with:
            name: dotnet-results-${{ matrix.dotnet-version }}
            path: TestResults-${{ matrix.dotnet-version }}
          # Use always() to always run this step to publish test results when there are test failures
          if: ${{ always() }}

Publishing to package registries

You can configure your workflow to publish your .NET package to a package registry when your CI tests pass. You can use repository secrets to store any tokens or credentials needed to publish your binary. The following example creates and publishes a package to GitHub Packages using dotnet core cli.

name: Upload dotnet package

on:
  release:
    types: [created]

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      packages: write
      contents: read
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v3
        with:
          dotnet-version: '6.0.x' # SDK Version to use.
          source-url: https://nuget.pkg.github.com/<owner>/index.json
        env:
          NUGET_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}
      - run: dotnet build --configuration Release <my project>
      - name: Create the package
        run: dotnet pack --configuration Release <my project>
      - name: Publish the package to GPR
        run: dotnet nuget push <my project>/bin/Release/*.nupkg