This page provides important information for .NET developers.

On this page:

Building Ice Applications for .NET with Visual Studio

Install the following software and then refer to the Ice Builder for Visual Studio instructions:

1. A supported version of Visual Studio

   With Visual Studio 2017, you can optionally install the .NET Core cross-development toolset to create applications for .NET Core 2.0.

2. The Ice Builder for Visual Studio extension
3. The zeroc.ice.net NuGet package, described later on this page

Building Ice Applications for .NET with the .NET Core SDK

Install the following software and then refer to the Ice Builder for MSBuild instructions:

1. The .NET Core 2.0 SDK for your operating system

2. The zeroc.ice.net NuGet package, described later on this page
3. The slice2cs compiler
   

   slice2cs is a command-line tool written in C++ and available on most platforms

   Platform	Distribution	Package with slice2cs
   Ubuntu	apt packages	zeroc-ice-compilers You need to install zeroc-ice-compilers from the 3.7.1 beta repo, as it includes a fix to the generated code for optional. The corresponding bug affects only Linux applications.
   RHEL	RPMs	ice-compilers You need to install ice-compilers from the 3.7.1 beta repo, as it includes a fix to the generated code for optional. The corresponding bug affects only Linux applications.
   Windows	NuGet	zeroc.ice.net

    

    

Programming Language

You can use any .NET programming language with Ice, however, the preferred programming language for Ice .NET applications is C# since:

• the only Slice language mapping for .NET is Slice to C#
• the only Slice compiler for .NET, slice2cs, generates C# code
• Ice for .NET is itself written in C#

zeroc.ice.net NuGet Package

The Ice for .NET (zeroc.ice.net)  NuGet package is organized as follows:

On Linux you need to edit NuGet configuration (~/.nuget/NuGet/NuGet.Config) to add a new package source

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <packageSources>
    <add key="zeroc.com" value="https://dev.zeroc.com/nexus/repository/nuget.ice-v3.7.1-netcore-beta0/" />
    <add key="nuget.org" value="https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json" protocolVersion="3" />
  </packageSources>
</configuration>

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.NET Framework and .NET Standard Assemblies

zeroc.ice.net includes two sets of Ice assemblies: one set of assemblies for the .NET Framework 4.5 and another set for .NET Standard 2.0.

These assemblies are the same except for the differences described below:

	.NET Framework 4.5 Assemblies	.NET Standard 2.0 Assemblies
Run-time platform	Windows	Windows, Linux, macOS
Target Framework	.NET Framework 4.5.1 or greater on Windows	Any implementation of .NET Standard 2.0, including .NET Core 2.0 and .NET Framework 4.6.1.
Ice properties can be read from the Windows Registry
Signals caught by Ice.Application	Signal catching implemented using the Windows native function SetConsoleCtrlHandler.	Signal catching implemented using the portable .NET event Console.KeyPress.

The .NET Standard 2.0 assemblies are expected to work with any .NET implementation of .NET Standard 2.0, however, they are currently tested and supported only with .NET Core 2.0 on Windows and Linux.

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Compression with bzip2

Ice for .NET supports the optional compression of Ice requests and responses using the bzip2 native library. The bzip2 native DLL for Windows x64 is included in the zeroc.ice.net package. You can use the bzip2 system library on Linux and macOS.

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Using the Sample Programs

Sample programs are available at the ice-demos GitHub repository. You can browse this repository to see build and usage instructions for all supported programming languages. You can clone this repository with:

git clone -b 3.7.1-rc https://github.com/zeroc-ice/ice-demos.git
cd ice-demos

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