Core: "Microsoft.NETCore.Platforms": "1.0.1-*" What is it for

[mikes-gh]

I have been follwowing nightlys -> RC2 so I have been following all the changes to project json etc.

One thing that still escapes me.

"Microsoft.NETCore.Platforms": "1.0.1-*" dependency. What is it for?

[xabikos]

I am also curious about this as it is used in cli samples repository on project.json of the example for the full .net framework

[joshfree]

It's the package that contains the runtime identifiers (RIDs) for the supported platforms -

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/articles/core/rid-catalog

https://github.com/dotnet/core/blob/master/release-notes/1.0/1.0.0.md#rtm-platform-support

https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/blob/master/pkg/Microsoft.NETCore.Platforms/runtime.json

[andriysavin]

@joshfree These links explain the content of the package, but its still not clear (at least to me) when and why I need to reference that package. For example, XUnit docs instruct to add this package (besides framework itself) to be able to run tests for desktop CLR targeting code, but I can't find any reason why: https://xunit.github.io/docs/getting-started-dotnet-core.html#targeting-desktop

[ericstj]

Usually you won't need to directly reference this.

As a package developer you should only need to reference it if your package uses runtimes (eg: runtimes/rid/lib/tfm/foo.dll) and doesn't already bring it in indirectly.

In your project you only need to reference it if you are using the "runtimes" section in the project.json and it isn't already brought in by the packages you've referenced.

The link you posted was out of date, but I suspect that link predated the work we did to automatically reference this package in all CoreFx packages: https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/8239.

[andriysavin]

Sorry, I've fixed the link. Thanks for clarification!