With the advent of cross-platform support for C# since .NET Core, it is now possible to develop C# applications on Linux. If you are on Windows, you can achieve this with WSL2 and an editor like Visual Studio Code, which is my preferred setup since it allows me to work in an environment similar to my production servers. The best part is that you can access Windows applications and Linux utils simultaneously.
Tooling #
There are three main components. Feel free to skip directly to the section you need.
WSL2 #
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a feature of Windows that allows you to run a Linux environment on your Windows machine, without the need for a separate virtual machine or dual booting.
Refer to this detailed guide by Microsoft on how to install it, as there are many configurations and options to choose from. In this scenario, I went with Ubuntu 22.04, which is the default Linux distribution for WSL2.
VS Code #
Install Visual Studio Code on Windows (not in your WSL file system), from the official website.
You will need these VS Code extensions:
- Remote - WSL (this will include the WSL extension)
- C#
- C# Dev Kit
The rest are my personal recommended, but optional extensions:
dotnet SDK #
The dotnet SDK comes packaged with the dotnet command-line tool and dotnet runtime, which is used to create, build, and run C# and .NET applications.
There are a few main ways to install it on Ubuntu. However, we will use a script provided by Microsoft, as it allows us to control where .NET is installed, and gives us access to preview releases.
First, there are some required DEB dependencies to be installed inside WSL2:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y libc6 libgcc1 libgssapi-krb5-2 libicu67 libssl1.1 libstdc++6 zlib1g
Then, download and run the following script found here. This installs the .NET 8.0 SDK.
cd ~/
wget https://dot.net/v1/dotnet-install.sh -O dotnet-install.sh
chmod +x ./dotnet-install.sh
./dotnet-install.sh --channel 8.0
To enable .NET on the command line, we need to set environment variables. Add the these two lines to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile file:
export DOTNET_ROOT=$HOME/.dotnet
export PATH=$PATH:$DOTNET_ROOT:$DOTNET_ROOT/tools
After restarting/opening a new terminal session. You can verify the installation by running dotnet --version in your terminal.
Running #
Let’s create a console app to test our setup with VS Code.
mkdir ~/my-app && cd ~/my-app
dotnet new console
code .
This will open your project directory with VS Code, where you’ll see that you’re connected to your WSL2 instance in the bottom left corner.
You may see a prompt to install the recommended extensions. At the minimum, you need to have installed the extensions listed in the
VS Code section from earlier, inside of WSL2. It is denoted by a "Install in WSL: Ubuntu" button on the extension search view, or "Extension is enabled on: 'WSL Ubuntu'" on an extension’s detail page.
Finally, run your app with the dotnet run command in the terminal (or in VS Code).
