CS Project File Directives

Common .csproj file directives.

Order doesn’t matter within each Group.
Open each to learn more and for other options.

<Project Sdk=”Microsoft.NET.Sdk”>

Top-level, encloses all else. Sdk is what type of sdk this project uses. Other valid values:

  • Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Web
  • Microsoft.Net.Sdk.Worker
<PropertyGroup Label=”ex: Production or Dev”>

PropertyGroup controls the build process
Can have Label and Condition attributes
Example:

<PropertyGroup Condition="'$(CompileConfig)' == 'DEBUG'">
   <Optimization> false </Optimization>
   <Obfuscate>false</Obfuscate>
   <OutputPath>$(OutputPath)\debug</OutputPath>
</PropertyGroup>
<OutputType>Exe</OutputType>

Library

<TargetFramework>net9.0</TargetFramework>
.Net 9.0 uses C# 13 by default

netstandard2.0 — used by .Net Framework, Xamarin, modern .Net
.Net Standard 2.0 is the x-platform standard
note it uses C# 7.3 by default but your can change it in LangVersion tag

<ImplicitUsings>enable</ImplicitUsings>

<Nullable>enable</Nullable>

Enables the compiler nullability warnings at the project level.
If omitted, it is set to disable by default
To enable/disable at file level write at top: #nullable enable or #nullable disable

<PublishAot>true</PublishAot>

Enables native AOT (Ahead-of-Time) OS-specific publishing
Must have Desktop development with C++ on VS installed
For Linux you must run sudo apt-get install clang zlib-dev

<InvariantGlobalization>true</InvariantGlobalization>

Makes the app non-culture-specific
To make the app act the same anywhere in the world
If false or missing, console app will take local culture of computer

<RootNamespace>Packt.Shared</RootNamespace>

substitute your default namespace for the project

<LangVersion>13</LangVersion>

C# version. If missing 13 will be used.

<AllowUnsafeBlocks>True</AllowUnsafeBlocks>

Allows unsafe code blocks (sizeof) for new types of numbers like so:

unsafe
{
  Console.WriteLine($"{sizeof(Half)} bytes"});
}
<RuntimeIdentifiers>win-x64;osc-arm64;linux-x64</RuntimeIdentiers>
  • win-x64 — Windows on an x64-compatible CPU
  • osx-arm64 — macOS on Apple Silicon
  • linux-x64 — most desktop distributions of Linux on x64-compatible CPU
  • linux-arm — Raspbian or Raspberry Pi OS 32-bit
  • linux-arm64 — Raspberry Pi Ubuntu 64-bit

</PropertyGroup>

<ItemGroup label=”whatever you want ex: Usings”>

<Using Include”System.Console” Static=”true” />

Now don’t need to add “using” declaration at top of each file

</ItemGroup>

<ItemGroup Label=”NuGet Packages”>

<ProjectReference Include=”[pathtoaprojectfile]” />

<ProjectReference Include=”Newstonsoft.Json” Version=”13.0.3″ />

To “fix” dependencies, every app should specify version without additional qualifiers
Qualifiers include: betas (beta1), release candidates (rc4), and wildcards.
Always fix dependencies to work with whatever version of .NET you are using

</ItemGroup>

</Project>