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Building CoreCLR

Introduction

Here is a brief overview on how to build the common form of CoreCLR in general. For further specific instructions on each platform, we have links to instructions later on in Platform-Specific Instructions.

To build just CoreCLR, use the subset flag to the build.sh or build.cmd script at the repo root. Note that specifying -subset explicitly is not necessary if it is the first argument (i.e. ./build.sh --subset clr and ./build.sh clr are equivalent). However, if you specify any other argument beforehand, then you must specify the -subset flag.

For Linux and macOS:

./build.sh --subset clr

For Windows:

.\build.cmd -subset clr

Common Building Options

By default, the script generates a Debug build type, which is not optimized code and includes asserts. As its name suggests, this makes it easier and friendlier to debug the code. If you want to make performance measurements, you ought to build the Release version instead, which doesn't have any asserts and has all code optimizations enabled. Likewise, if you plan on running tests, the Release configuration is more suitable since it's considerably faster than the Debug one. For this, you add the flag -configuration release (or -c release). For example:

./build.sh --subset clr --configuration release

As mentioned before in the general building document, CoreCLR also supports a Checked build type which has asserts enabled like Debug, but is built with the native compiler optimizer enabled, so it runs much faster. This is the usual mode used for running tests in the CI system.

Now, it is also possible to select a different configuration for each subset when building them together. The --configuration flag applies universally to all subsets, but it can be overridden with any one or more of the following ones:

  • --runtimeConfiguration (-rc): Flag for the CLR build configuration.
  • --librariesConfiguration (-lc): Flag for the libraries build configuration.
  • --hostConfiguration (-hc): Flag for the host build configuration.

For example, a very common scenario used by developers and the repo's test scripts with default options, is to build the clr in Debug mode, and the libraries in Release mode. To achieve this, the command-line would look like the following:

./build.sh --subset clr+libs --configuration Release --runtimeConfiguration Debug

Or alternatively:

./build.sh --subset clr+libs --librariesConfiguration Release --runtimeConfiguration Debug

For more information about all the different options available, supply the argument -help|-h when invoking the build script. On Unix-like systems, non-abbreviated arguments can be passed in with a single - or double hyphen --.

Build Drivers

If you want to use Ninja to drive the native build instead of Make on non-Windows platforms, you can pass the -ninja flag to the build script as follows:

./build.sh --subset clr --ninja

If you want to use Visual Studio's MSBuild to drive the native build on Windows, you can pass the -msbuild flag to the build script similarly to the -ninja flag.

We recommend using Ninja for building the project on Windows since it more efficiently uses the build machine's resources for the native runtime build in comparison to Visual Studio's MSBuild.

Extra Flags

To pass extra compiler/linker flags to the coreclr build, set the environment variables EXTRA_CFLAGS, EXTRA_CXXFLAGS and EXTRA_LDFLAGS as needed. Don't set CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS/LDFLAGS directly as that might lead to configure-time tests failing.

Build Results Layout

Once the build has concluded, it will have produced its output artifacts in the following structure:

  • Product binaries will be dropped in artifacts\bin\coreclr\<OS>.<arch>.<configuration> folder.
  • A NuGet package, Microsoft.Dotnet.CoreCLR, will be created under artifacts\bin\coreclr\<OS>.<arch>.<configuration>\.nuget folder.
  • Test binaries (if built) will be dropped under artifacts\tests\coreclr\<OS>.<arch>.<configuration> folder. However, remember the root build script will not build the tests. The instructions for working with tests (building and running) are in the testing doc.
  • The build places logs in artifacts\log and these are useful when the build fails.
  • The build places all of its intermediate output in the artifacts\obj\coreclr directory.

If you want to force a full rebuild of the subsets you specified when calling the build script, pass the -rebuild flag to it, in addition to any other arguments you might require.

Platform-Specific Instructions

Now that you've got the general idea on how the CoreCLR builds work, here are some further documentation links on platform-specific caveats and features.

We also have specific instructions for building NativeAOT here.

Testing CoreCLR

For testing your build, the testing docs have detailed instructions on how to do it.