Yes, it can contain the .NET runtime like a Go executable. You can already (mostly) do this today with .NET Core 3/3.1 (I say "mostly" just because it simply u

Yes, it can contain the .NET runtime like a Go executable. You can already (mostly) do this today with .NET Core 3/3.1 (I say "mostly" just because it simply unzips the runtime on first run). I deploy to Linux with everything in a single file and it's been perfect - headache-less deploys. You can read more at https://github.com/dotnet/designs/blob/master/accepted/2020/single-file/design_3_0.md https://github.com/dotnet/designs/blob/master/accepted/2020/... and https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/dotnet-publish https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/dotnet-pu.... I haven't had any problems with it at all. The size is a bit bigger, but I don't really care about that and then I can just run it like anything else without worrying about making sure that the .NET runtime is on my deploy system and kept up to date. You can also use the PublishReadyToRun flag to do AOT compilation so that startup times are faster (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/whats-new/dotnet-core-3-0#readytorun-images https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/whats-new/dotne...). It still keeps the IL (intermediate language) around for certain things so the file sizes can be a bit larger, but if startup times are a concern, it's an option.