Introduction
This guide shows you how to build, test, and publish a .NET package.
To build and test your .NET project on GitHub AE, the .NET Core SDK is required. You must install the required software on your self-hosted runners. For more information about self-hosted runners, see "Hosting your own 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 the .NET starter workflow
GitHub provides a .NET starter workflow that should work for most .NET projects, and this guide includes examples that show you how to customize this starter workflow. For more information, see the .NET starter workflow.
To get started quickly, add the starter workflow to the .github/workflows directory of your repository.
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@v3
- name: Setup .NET Core SDK ${{ matrix.dotnet-version }}
uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v3
with:
dotnet-version: ${{ matrix.dotnet-version }}
- name: Install dependencies
run: dotnet restore
- name: Build
run: dotnet build --configuration Release --no-restore
- name: Test
run: dotnet test --no-restore --verbosity normal
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@v3
- 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 3.1.3. Alternatively, you can use semantic version syntax to get the latest minor release. This example uses the latest minor release of .NET 3.
- name: Setup .NET SDK
uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v3
with:
# Semantic version range syntax or exact version of a dotnet version
dotnet-version: '6.0.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@v3
- 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
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@v3
- 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 workflow data as artifacts."
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@v3
- 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@v3
- 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