Package Request: .NET Core

[christianrondeau]

This project is a very promising initiative to develop in .Net with real cross platform support.

Website: https://www.microsoft.com/net/core (already supports multiple Linux distros)

And the cli on github: https://github.com/dotnet/cli

[christianrondeau]

I have started a branch, and it compiles on my machine, but I will need some help to make sure it works: https://github.com/christianrondeau/termux-packages/tree/dotnet-dev/packages/dotnet-dev

I searched for high level instructions on how to:

1. Test the package I just built on Termux on my Android device. How can I do that? Should I just copy the files and "trust" that it'll work once on Termux's apt repo?
2. Clarifications on the HOSTBUILD; should every device build it, or can I have Termux's repo host the binaries?

A few links to get started would be very helpful, rather than fiddling (and probably making easy to avoid mistakes)

Thanks! Once I have the information I need, I might contribute to the documentation once I understand all pieces.

[vishalbiswas]

After building the package, you can find its deb package(s) in the termux-packages/debs folder of your cloned git repo.
Make sure you have built the package for your devices' architecture. If not run build-package.sh -a <arch> <package> replacing arch with the actual arch.
Copy the deb file(s) over to your device. Install them with dpkg -i <deb_filename>. If the package dependencies haven't been met, run apt install -f.
Then, if you have compiled it correctly, you can run the dotnet executable.

[christianrondeau]

Thank you very much @vishalbiswas - I should have enough to get going for a while :) I'm still trying to understand the relationship between .Net Core repositories and their apt-get counterpart, but I'll reach out if I get stuck.

[cydhaselton]

I've actually built coreclr in termux on device, as well as the necessary bits of corefx. Unfortunately I failed to push commits to my forked coreclr repo so I have to rebuild from scratch.
I can post back once I'm done.

[christianrondeau]

@cydhaselton that would be amazing, I'm still trying to figure out the build part of dotnet-cli (works from a checkout, not from their release tar file for multiple reasons), the relationship with the three .deb files generated in the Microsoft Ubuntu release as well as the subtleties of Termux itself :) Also the time I can put on this per day is near to zero so that will probably take forever! Hopefully I'll learn something from this though.

Let me know if I can help, I'll continue slowly progressing on my branch in the meantime.

[christianrondeau]

Small info : dotnet/cli master builds, and /t:Compile skips tests correctly... but the v1.0.0-preview2.1 tag does not on Ubuntu x64.

So either we build on a custom commit rather than the release, or we monkey patch dynamically. Or I got it wrong :P

I'll continue my investigation.

[cydhaselton]

@christianrondeau: Best of luck with your efforts...I'm still banging my head against this, as I'd like to get Powershell running in Termux.
I will say that, from what I understand, the key build is System.Private.Corelib.dll; this can't be built on an "unsupported" device (no idea what constitutes an unsupported device) and is key to running various bits of .NET core.

If you are ever able to build it for Termux let me know. I'd be more than happy to test.

EDIT: So you have a dotnet/cli that runs on Termux? Care to share?

[christianrondeau]

Not yet, no - I have the build-package.sh building dotnet/cli correctly (pushed this morning), but I'm now trying to understand what build-package.sh does after the build, and what files should I move where for the rest of the build process to work (like I said, very small steps every day!)

There is a bunch of output folders generated by the dotnet/cli build, with multiple stages, .deb files and more and looking at other termux packages, there's some magic that "move files around" between stages that I don't understand, so I'm pretty much reading scripts for now. Once I clarify how to get that build process going through the end, I'll be able to try the executable on my Android device and report back.

[vishalbiswas]

@christianrondeau build-package.sh steps:
0. Download source

1. Configure source
2. Run make, or your overrided function
3. Run make install
   This will get all the compiled and/or other configs, etc from elsewhere and put them into the massage dir. This directly has every file which goes into the final package.
   If your project is not based on Makefile, be sure to override termux_step_make_install to install all required files under $TERMUX_PREFIX, to ensure they are included in the package.
4. Massage package
5. Create package

[christianrondeau]

Thanks again @vishalbiswas, this was indeed my understanding (but I prefer knowing this rather than just relying on my guesses). Where I am at (for those who are interested):

Lookin at the Ubuntu distribution of .NET core, I see the .deb file referenced in https://apt-mo.trafficmanager.net/repos/dotnet-release/dists/xenial/main/binary-amd64/Packages contains:

• dotnet-sdk-ubuntu.16.04-x64.1.0.0-preview2.1-003155.deb
  • usr
    • share
      • doc
      • dotnet
      • man
• dotnet-sharedframework-ubuntu.16.04-x64.1.1.0-preview1-001100-00.deb
  • usr
    • share
      • doc
      • dotnet
• dotnet-hostfxr-ubuntu.16.04-x64.1.1.0-preview1-001100-00.deb
  • usr
    • share
      • doc
      • dotnet
• dotnet-host-ubuntu.16.04-x64.1.1.0-preview1-001100-00.deb
  • usr
    • bin (contains the dotnet-ci binary)
    • share
      • doc
      • dotnet
      • man

And when I build locally .NET, if I look at https://github.com/dotnet/cli/blob/rel/1.0.0/Documentation/developer-guide.md#buildingrunning I can see I need the stage 2 output, which looks like this (excluding third party notices and license files):

• stage2
  • dotnet (the executable)
  • host (only contains fxr/1.0.1/libhostfxr.so)
  • sdk (contains 1.0.0-preview3-000001/ and lots of files)
  • shared (contains Microsoft.NETCore.App/1.0.1/ and lots of files)

So two things I'm not sure about.

1. I have a single git repository, which looks like is actually generating the files of the dotnet-host-ubuntu.16.04-x64.1.1.0-preview1-001100-00.deb file.
2. The output files do contain the executable, but the file structure is completely different

So my next steps are to:

1. Try to copy just the dotnet executable, like the host deb file, in the massage folder and see what happens,
2. Test it on my device, and hopefully get a helpful error message saying that something's missing!

It's moving forward!

[christianrondeau]

I can now build the .deb file successfully! But here's my first roadblock. I copied the list of dependencies from the ubuntu .Net Core target, and I tried to install them. Most of them are not available for termux (see output below). Does this mean I'm screwed?

Reading package lists...
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
Package libc6 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

Package libcurl3 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

Package libgcc1 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

Package libgssapi-krb5-2 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

Package libicu55 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

Package liblldb-3.6 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

Package liblttng-ust0 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

Package libssl1.0.0 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

Package libstdc++6 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

Package libunwind8 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

Package libuuid1 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

Package zlib1g is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

[christianrondeau]

Skipping dependencies using dpkg --ignore-dependencies shows me I got something wrong even before getting dependencies (on termux) :

$ dpkg -i --ignore-depends=... dotnet-dev_1.0.0-preview2.0.1-0_aarch64.deb
(Reading database ... 8408 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../dotnet-dev_1.0.0-preview2.0.1-0_aarch64.deb ...
Unpacking dotnet-dev (1.0.0-preview2.0.1-0) over (1.0.0-preview2.0.1-0) ...
Setting up dotnet-dev (1.0.0-preview2.0.1-0) ...

$ dotnet
-bash: /data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/dotnet: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error

I'm on a S7 (aarch64), I compiled on Ubuntu 16.04 x64, and I took the file from the termux-packages/debs folder.

The built executable works on Ubuntu, but the massaged version spits out (on ubuntu) :

$ ~/.termux-build/dotnet-dev/massage/data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/dotnet
realpath(): Invalid argument
Failed to resolve full path of the current executable [/proc/self/exe]

I guess this part is normal, but I can't say for sure.

Not sure where to go from there. Any idea?

[vishalbiswas]

@christianrondeau Turn off HOSTBUILD. From my understanding, hostbuild will build for the build machine. It should only be enabled for arch independent and/or packages that don't require libc (I'm not sure). Also remove libc6 from depends list, termux uses system provided libc, bionic. Change libcurl3 to libcurl and also remove version requirements from them.
Multiple packages in your Depends array are not available for termux yet. You may need yo port them, too, or disable respective features before compiling.