NET5.0 PublishSingleFile publish more than one file

Question

I'm publishing my net 5 app with:

dotnet publish -r win-x64 -p:PublishSingleFile=true --self-contained true

but, as a result I have:

Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
-a----        2/16/2021  10:20 PM         747896 clrcompression.dll
-a----        2/16/2021  10:20 PM        1322360 clrjit.dll
-a----        2/16/2021  10:20 PM        5153144 coreclr.dll
-a----        3/15/2021  11:48 AM       53841260 fff.exe
-a----        3/15/2021  11:48 AM          11300 fff.pdb
-a----        3/15/2021  11:48 AM            537 fff.xml
-a----        2/16/2021  10:20 PM        1056640 mscordaccore.dll

deploying just fff.exe does not work. Have to deploy dll's too. Why? Source code for reference can be found here: Fast Find in Files

Answer 1

Use this command instead

dotnet publish -r win-x64 /p:PublishSingleFile=true /p:IncludeNativeLibrariesInSingleFile=true /p:IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract=true -c release

Documentation

Answer 2

deploying just fff.exe does not work. Have to deploy dll's too. Why?

To answer your actual question... Here are the reasons why there are more files that fff.exe:

• coreclr.dll contains the native libraries of the dotnet core framework.
• clrjit.dll contains the just in time compiler of the dotnet core framework
• clrcompression.dll contains native data compression routines.
• *.pdb contains debug symbols. You can omit them in release builds.
• *.xml contains summaries (descriptions of classes, methods, etc)

Like @JL0PD already mentioned. To achieve your desired result, just use this command to publish your application:

dotnet publish -r win-x64 /p:PublishSingleFile=true /p:IncludeNativeLibrariesInSingleFile=true /p:IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract=true -c release