.NET 8.0 Preview 1 release - .NET 8.0.0-preview.1 and SDK 8.0.100-preview.1

[MichaelSimons]

Please use the v8.0.100-preview.1 tag to source-build .NET version 8.0.0-preview.1 / 8.0.100-preview.1.

• Release Notes: https://github.com/dotnet/core/blob/main/release-notes/8.0/preview/8.0.0-preview.1.md
• Tag URL: https://github.com/dotnet/dotnet/releases/tag/v8.0.100-preview.1

Virtual Mono Repository (VMR)

.NET is now buildable on Linux directly from the dotnet/dotnet repository. We're calling this new repository a Virtual Mono Repository (VMR). It has the benefits of a true monorepo but is a regularly-updated projection of the many existing repos that contributors work in (more efficiently) every day. We see this new approach as being a significant step forward in approachability for building .NET as a whole product from source.

See build instructions to build the VMR on your own machine.

Prebuilts

This release requires the following prebuilts. These prebuilts are retrieved by prep.sh in order to support building in an offline environment.

• Microsoft.AspNetCore.App.Ref.6.0.13
• Microsoft.AspNetCore.App.Ref.7.0.2
• Microsoft.AspNetCore.App.Runtime.osx-x64.7.0.2
• Microsoft.AspNetCore.App.Runtime.win-x64.7.0.2
• Microsoft.AspNetCore.App.Runtime.win-x86.7.0.2
• Microsoft.NET.ILLink.Tasks.7.0.100-1.23062.2
• Microsoft.NETCore.App.Host.linux-x64.7.0.2
• Microsoft.NETCore.App.Host.osx-x64.7.0.2
• Microsoft.NETCore.App.Host.win-x64.7.0.2
• Microsoft.NETCore.App.Host.win-x86.7.0.2
• Microsoft.NETCore.App.Ref.6.0.13
• Microsoft.NETCore.App.Ref.7.0.2
• Microsoft.NETCore.App.Runtime.osx-x64.7.0.2
• Microsoft.NETCore.App.Runtime.win-x64.7.0.2
• Microsoft.NETCore.App.Runtime.win-x86.7.0.2
• Microsoft.NETFramework.ReferenceAssemblies.1.0.3
• Microsoft.NETFramework.ReferenceAssemblies.net20.1.0.3
• Microsoft.NETFramework.ReferenceAssemblies.net45.1.0.3
• Microsoft.NETFramework.ReferenceAssemblies.net452.1.0.3
• Microsoft.NETFramework.ReferenceAssemblies.net462.1.0.3
• Microsoft.NETFramework.ReferenceAssemblies.net472.1.0.3
• Microsoft.NETFramework.ReferenceAssemblies.net48.1.0.3

Bootstrapping

Each major release of .NET requires bootstrapping. Because of the previously mentioned prebuilts, the stage 2 build (e.g. rebuilding) requires the following RID-specific prebuilt. This needs to be retrieved from your 7.0.2 source-built artifacts. If you haven't source-built 7.0.2 you won't be able to bootstrap 8.0 preview 1. This prebuilt is not required when building stage 1 (e.g. building with the Microsoft provided SDK). Place this package into the directory specified by the build.sh --with-packages option.

• Microsoft.NETCore.App.Host.<RID>.7.0.2

@dotnet/distro-maintainers

{
  "Channel": "8.0",
  "Runtime": "8.0.0-preview.1",
  "Sdk": "8.0.100-preview.1",
  "DotnetTag": "v8.0.100-preview.1"
}

[ayakael]

Very much appreciate the list of required prebuilts!

I'm glad to report that an aport for dotnet8 on alpine.3.18-x64 is working, and a final package is being built on my Gitlab instance with artifacts automatically pushed here. Only GA of dotnet8 will be pushed to the official repo, but I hope that this will make sure broken bits are found along the way.

In somewhat related news, I'm working on automating maintenance for dotnet on Alpine. I've so far automated tarballs building for dotnet6, dotnet7 and dotnet8. Fellow package maintainers are welcome to use these, although as I run this server at home I cannot ensure 100% availability. Next step is automating bootstrap crossbuilding from linux-musl-x64 to linux-musl-s390x / linux-musl-ppc64le as to facilitate testing for those platforms as net8 development moves along.

Very happy with the VMR changes! Thanks for all the work.

[tmds]

I've so far automated tarballs building for dotnet6, dotnet7 and dotnet8.

Nice! There was an issue for source-build to provide tarballs: #298.
If there is still a common need, it would be nice if the upstream project could provide these.

Are you also creating a tarball somewhere that contains the prebuilts?

[ayakael]

Unfortunately, those files are missing .git/HEAD and .git/config. eng/pack-source.sh adds those when generating the tarball. It be nice if that information was pushed to prereqs/git-info as to allow directly using the .tar.gz in the releases page.

[premun]

You can use this script to export the sources with the HEAD/config files included. We have coverage in our official CI, where for some specific distro builds that we're testing, we use this script first and then build from the export. So the build should work.

We should mention this in the main README. As this has been the first release there, I agree it might be a good idea to include this export instead of the default sources that GitHub appends to each release. We will look into that.

[MichaelSimons]

Are you also creating a tarball somewhere that contains the prebuilts?

Yes, prep.sh will retrieve a prebuilt tarball and the previous source-build artifacts necessary to build with. After running the script you will find these at ./prereqs/packages/archive.

[tmds]

It be nice if that information was pushed to prereqs/git-info as to allow directly using the .tar.gz in the releases page.

+1

[MichaelSimons]

I logged #3265 to track providing a buildable source-tarball.

[omajid]

I have created a work-in-progress package for Fedora-family distros based on this 8.0 Preview 1 release.

Sources: https://pagure.io/dotnet-sig/dotnet8.0
Binaries: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/g/dotnet-sig/dotnet-preview/

Binaries for 8.0 Preview 1 are available for Fedora (36, 37, 38, Rawhide), CentOS Stream (8 and 9), and RHEL (8 and 9) on x86_64 (aka x64) and aarch64 (aka arm64). The copr build system doesn't let me build RHEL8+aarch64, so that's not available.

[tmds]

This is awesome!

I think last time we did a preview release on Fedora, it was for one of the later previews of .NET 3 in the summer of 2019.

Being able to build a preview 1 in tandem with Microsoft is a major milestone.
Great work @dotnet/source-build-contrib for making this possible!

@omajid, thank you for providing the builds for the Fedora-based distros!