What is your definition of "self-contained"? Does not require dotnet, or is contained within a single executable? Building an application that doesn't require

What is your definition of "self-contained"? Does not require dotnet, or is contained within a single executable? Building an application that doesn't require a dotnet core runtime is a one-liner: dotnet publish -c Release -r win10-x64 --self-contained true https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/deploying/deploy-with-cli https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/deploying/deplo... If you mean creating a single EXE with no external dependencies whatsoever, that's something that they are discussing in .NET Core 3 but isn't straightforward right now. It's basically the same story as Python, you have to bundle the interpreter with the application or you have to rely on the interpreter being pre-installed. With dotnet, you rely on the runtime being installed or you bundle it in as self-contained.