The dotnet compiler produces two copies of the same executable and my google skills are not good enough to figure out why.

E.g. in a simple Console project:

dotnet publish --configuration Release produces bin/Release/net8.0/FizzBuzz and bin/Release/net8.0/publish/FizzBuzz, which are identical.

I want to build a most optimized and a cross-platform executable. How do I do that?

I know that there are different build targets (OS specific, dotnet SDK specific etc) but I’m confused by the many options.

If you link to https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/dotnet-publish, please provide a description of the cons of the options, since I don’t get them.

My FizzBuzz.csproj file:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
    <AssemblyName>FizzBuzz</AssemblyName>
    <TargetFramework>net8.0</TargetFramework>
    <ImplicitUsings>enable</ImplicitUsings>
    <Nullable>enable</Nullable>
    <!-- I added ErrorOnDuplicatePublishOutputFiles -->
    <ErrorOnDuplicatePublishOutputFiles>true</ErrorOnDuplicatePublishOutputFiles>
  </PropertyGroup>

</Project>

I added <ErrorOnDuplicatePublishOutputFiles> to see if that would change anything. It did not.

dotnet --version
8.0.301

uname -a
Linux kali 6.8.11-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Kali 6.8.11-1kali2 (2024-05-30) x86_64 GNU/Linux