The .NET core 3.0 SDK provides a tool that can reduce the application's size by analyzing IL and trimming unused assemblies.
- Self-contained apps include everything needed to run your code without requiring .NET to be installed on the host computer.
- However, the app often only requires a small subset of the framework to function, and other unused libraries could be removed.
IL Linker
The IL Linker is a tool one can use to ship the minimal possible IL code and metadata that a set of programs might require to run instead to the full libraries.
- .NET Core now includes a setting that will use the IL linker tool to scan the IL of your app.
- This tool detects what code is required and then trims unused libraries.
- This tool can significantly reduce the deployment size of some apps.
To enable this tool, add the <PublishTrimmed> setting in your project and publish a self-contained app.
<PropertyGroup>
<PublishTrimmed>true</PublishTrimmed>
</PropertyGroup>
Or you can run the following from the command line as shown below.
dotnet publish -r <rid> -c Release
As an example, the basic "hello world" new console project template that is included, when published, hits about 70 MB in size. By using <PublishTrimmed>, that size is reduced to about 30 MB.
- It is important to consider that applications or frameworks (including ASP.NET Core and WPF) that use reflection or related dynamic features will often break when trimmed.
- This breakage occurs because the linker doesn't know about this dynamic behavior and can't determine which framework types are required for reflection.
- The IL Linker tool can be configured to be aware of this scenario.
Make sure to test your application after trimming.
