Mono(mkbundle) Mono(mkbundle)
NAME
mkbundle, mkbundle2 - Creates a bundled executable.
SYNOPSIS
mkbundle [options] assembly1 [assembly2 ...]
DESCRIPTION
mkbundle generates an executable program that will contain static
copies of the assemblies listed on the command line. By default only
the assemblies specified in the command line will be included in the
bundle. To automatically include all of the dependencies referenced,
use the "--deps" command line option.
There are two modes of operation, one uses an existing Mono binary or a
server-hosted list of binaries and is enabled when you use either the
--cross, --sdk or the --runtime command line options.
An older mechanism creates a small C stub that links against the lib-
mono library to produce a self-contained executable and requires a C
compiler. It is described in the "OLD EMBEDDING" section below.
For example, to create a bundle for hello world, use the following com-
mand:
$ mkbundle -o hello --simple hello.exe
You can configure options to be passed to the Mono runtime directly
into your executable, for this, use the --options flag. For example,
the following disables inlining, by passing the "-O=-inline" command
line option to the embedded executable:
$ mkbundle -o hello --options -O=-inline --simple hello.exe
The simple version allows for cross-compiling, this requires a Mono
runtime to be installed in the ~/.mono/targets/TARGET/mono to be
available. You can use the "--local-targets" to list all available
targets, and the "--cross" argument to specify the target, like this:
$ mkbundle --local-targets
Available targets:
default - Current System Mono
4.4.0-macosx-x86
4.4.0-debian-8-arm64
$ mkbundle --cross 4.4.0-debian-8-powerpc hello.exe -o hello-debian
The above will bundle your native library into hello-debian for a De-
bian 8 system running on a PowerPC machine.
We provide pre-packages binaries for Mono for various architectures,
which allow you to cross compile, use the --list-targets to get a list
of all targets supported, and use the --fetch-target flag to retrieve a
target that you do not have installed, like this:
$ mkbundle --list-targets
Cross-compilation targets available:
4.4.0-linux-libc2.13-amd64
4.4.0-linux-libc2.13-armel
4.4.0-linux-libc2.13-armhf
4.4.0-linux-libc2.13-i386
4.4.0-macos-10.7-amd64
4.4.0-macos-10.7-i386
4.4.2-linux-libc2.13-amd64
4.4.2-linux-libc2.13-armel
4.4.2-linux-libc2.13-armhf
4.4.2-linux-libc2.13-i386
4.4.2-macos-10.7-amd64
4.4.2-macos-10.7-i386
$ mkbundle --fetch-target 4.4.2-macos-10.7-i386
And then you can produce a binary that will run on 32-bit Mono on
MacOS:
$ mkbundle --cross 4.4.2-macos-10.7-i386 hello.exe -o hello-macos
Downloaded targets are stored ~/.mono/targets directory.
OPTIONS
--config FILE
Specifies that a DLLMAP Mono config file must be bundled as
well. In the simple and cross compiler modes, if no config
file is specified the one for the current target is picked (ei-
ther the system one in the case of the simple mode, or the one
that came from the cross compilation target for the cross com-
piling mode).
--config-dir DIR
When passed, DIR will be set for the MONO_CFG_DIR environment
variable
--cross target
Use this to request mkbundle generate a cross-compiled binary.
It Creates a bundle for the specified target platform. The tar-
get must be a directory in ~/.mono/targets/ that contains an SDK
installation as produced by the mono-package-runtime tool. You
can get a list of the precompiled versions of the runtime using
--list-targets and you can fetch a specific target using the
--fetch-target command line option.
This flag is mutually exclusive with --sdk which is used to
specify an absolute path to resolve the Mono runtime from and
the --runtime option which is used to manually construct the
cross-platform package.
--deps This option will bundle all of the referenced assemblies for the
assemblies listed on the command line option. This is useful to
distribute a self-contained image.
--env KEY=VALUE
Use this to hardcode an environment variable at runtime for KEY
to be mapped to VALUE. This is useful in scenarios where you
want to enable certain Mono runtime configuration options that
are controlled by environment variables.
--fetch-target target
Downloads a precompiled runtime for the specified target from
the Mono distribution site.
--i18n encoding
Specified which encoding tables to ship with the executable.
By default, Mono ships the supporting I18N.dll assembly and the
I18N.West.dll assembly. If your application will use the Sys-
tem.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding with encodings other than the West
encodings, you should specify them here.
You can use the none parameter to request that no implicit en-
codings should be bundled, including the supporting I18N.dll,
use this option if you have ran a linker on your own.
You can use the all flag to bundle all available encodings.
Or you can use a comma delimited list of the workds CJK, Mid-
West, Other, Rare and West to specificy which encoding assem-
blies to distribute.
-L path
Adds the `path' do the search list for assemblies. The rules
are the same as for the compiler -lib: or -L flags.
--library [LIB,]PATH
Embeds the dynamic library file pointed to by `PATH' and option-
ally give it the name `LIB' into the bundled executable. This
is used to ship native library dependencies that are unpacked at
startup and loaded from the runtime. Multiple libraries should
be specified in dependency order, where later ones on the com-
mand line depend on earlier ones.
--lists-targets
Lists all of the available local cross compilation targets
available as precompiled binaries on the Mono distribution
server.
--local-targets
Lists all of the available local cross compilation targets.
--cil-strip PATH
Provides a CIL stripper that mkbundle will use if able to. The
intended use is to help reduce file size on AOT.
--in-tree path/to/mono/source/root
Provides mkbundle with a mono source repository from which to
pull the necessary headers for compilation. This allows mkbun-
dle to run out of the project's source tree, useful for working
with multiple runtimes and for testing without installing.
--managed-linker PATH
Provides mkbundle access to a managed linker to preprocess the
assemblies.
--machine-config FILE
Uses the given FILE as the machine.config file for the generated
application. The machine config contains an XML file that is
used by System.Configuration APIs to configure the .NET stack.
Typically this is $prefix/etc/mono/4.5/machine.config.
If you want to disable this automatic bundling, you can use the
--no-machine-config flag. In the simple and cross compiler
modes, if no machine.config file is specified the one for the
current target is picked (either the system one in the case of
the simple mode, or the one that came from the cross compilation
target for the cross compiling mode).
--no-config
In simple or cross compiling mode, this prevents mkbundle from
automatically bundling a config file.
--nodeps
This is the default: mkbundle will only include the assemblies
that were specified on the command line to reduce the size of
the resulting image created.
--no-machine-config
In simple or cross compiling mode, this prevents mkbundle from
automatically bundling a machine.config file.
-o filename
Places the output on `out'. If the flag -c is specified, this
is the C host program. If not, this contains the resulting exe-
cutable.
--options OPTS
Since the resulting executable will be treated as a standalone
program, you can use this option to pass configuration options
to the Mono runtime and bake those into the resulting exe-
cutable. These options are specified as OPTS.
You can use the above to configure options that you would typi-
cally pass on the command line to Mono, before the main program
is executed.
Additionally, users of your binary can still configure their own
options by setting the MONO_ENV_OPTIONS environment variable.
--sdk SDK_PATH
Use this flag to specify a path from which mkbundle will resolve
the Mono SDK from. The SDK path should be the prefix path that
you used to configure a Mono installation. And would typically
contain files lik SDK_PATH/bin/mono , SDK_PATH/lib/mono/4.5 and
so on.
When this flag is specified, mkbundle will resolve the runtime,
the framework libraries, unmanaged resources and configuration
files from the files located in this directory.
This flag is mutually exlusive with --cross
--target-server SERVER
By default the mkbundle tool will download from a Mono server
the target runtimes, you can specify a different server to pro-
vide cross-compiled runtimes.
--mono-api-struct-path FILE
FILE points to a file with the definition of the BundleMonoAPI
structure which contains the required pointers to various Mono
API functions used throughout the generated code. This mechanism
is meant to be used by third parties which embed the Mono run-
time and dynamically load and initialize it as part of the ap-
plication startup, in which case the Mono APIs will not be
available for the shared library loader and the bundle will fail
to work (one example of such an embedding third party is Xam-
arin.Android).
After providing the definition FILE, the embedder must call the
void initialize_mono_api (const BundleMonoAPI *info) function
found in the generated code before calling void mono_mkbun-
dle_init (). The structure passed to initialize_mono_api doesn't
need to be dynamically allocated as its contents is copied to
the local structure in the generated code and no pointer to the
passed structure is retained or used after initialize_mono_api
returns.
The list of pointers is not documented here. Instead, please
look at the bundle-mono-api.inc file found in the mkbundle
source directory in your Mono source tree (mcs/tools/mkbundle)
or in the Mono's GitHub repository,
https://github.com/mono/mono/blob/master/mcs/tools/mkbundle/bun-
dle-mono-api.inc
Please note that your structure must match the one expected by
your version of the Mono runtime.
The file must also define the mkbundle_log_error function with
the following signature:
static void mkbundle_log_error (const char *format, ...) {}
The function should implement logging API specific to the embed-
der.
OLD EMBEDDING
The old embedding system compiles a small C stub that embeds the C code
and compiles the resulting executable using the system compiler. This
requires both a working C compiler installation and only works to bun-
dle binaries for the current host.
The feature is still available, but we recommend the simpler, faster
and more convenient new mode.
For example, to create a bundle for hello world, use the following com-
mand:
$ mkbundle -o hello hello.exe
The above will pull hello.exe into a native program called "hello".
Notice that the produced image still contains the CIL image and no pre-
compilation is done.
In addition, it is possible to control whether mkbundle should compile
the resulting executable or not with the -c option. This is useful if
you want to link additional libraries or control the generated output
in more detail. For example, this could be used to link some libraries
statically:
$ mkbundle -c -o host.c -oo bundles.o --deps hello.exe
$ cc host.c bundles.o /usr/lib/libmono.a -lc -lrt
You may also use mkbundle to generate a bundle you can use when embed-
ding the Mono runtime in a native application. In that case, use both
the -c and --nomain options. The resulting host.c file will not have a
main() function. Call mono_mkbundle_init() before initializing the JIT
in your code so that the bundled assemblies are available to the embed-
ded runtime.
OLD EMBEDDING OPTIONS
These options can only be used instead of using the --cross, --runtime
or --simple options.
-c Produce the stub file, do not compile the resulting stub.
-oo filename
Specifies the name to be used for the helper object file that
contains the bundle.
--keeptemp
By default mkbundle will delete the temporary files that it uses
to produce the bundle. This option keeps the file around.
--nomain
With the -c option, generate the host stub without a main()
function.
--static
By default mkbundle dynamically links to mono and glib. This
option causes it to statically link instead.
-z Compresses the assemblies before embedding. This results in
smaller executable files, but increases startup time and re-
quires zlib to be installed on the target system.
AOT Options
These options support an mkbundle using AOT compilation with static
linking. A native compiler toolchain is required.
--aot-runtime PATH
Provide the path to the mono runtime to use for AOTing assem-
blies.
--aot-dedup
(Experimental) Deduplicate AOT'ed methods based on a unique man-
gling of method names.
--aot-mode MODE
MODE can be either "full" or "llvmonly" at this time. Cur-
rently, mkbundle supports three AOT modes. The default mode
(this option unset) will AOT methods but will fall back on run-
time codegen where it is much faster or offers a more full com-
patibility profile. The "full" setting will generate the neces-
sary stubs to not require runtime code generation. The "llv-
monly" setting does the same, but forces all codegen to go
through the llvm backend.
WINDOWS
If you are using the old embedding on Windows systems, it possible to
use a Unix-like toolchain like cygwin's and install gcc, gcc-mingw
packages or use Visual Studio 2015/2017 VC toolchain together with
Clang for Visual Studio as assembler. Clang can be installed as an in-
dividual component, "Clang/C2", using Visual Studio installer.
Using Visual Studio toolchain, mkbundle will, by default, use latest
installed Visual Studio compiler and linker as well as Windows SDK. If
executed from one of the Visual Studio developer command prompts, mk-
bundle will retrieve information directly from that build environment.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
AS Assembler command. The default is "as". For Visual Studio, de-
fault is "clang.exe". If "clang.exe" for Visual Studio is not
installed, mkbundle will fall back using "as".
CC C compiler command. The default is "cc" for Linux, "gcc" for
cygwin and "cl.exe" for Visual Studio.
MONO_BUNDLED_OPTIONS
Options to be passed to the bundled Mono runtime, separated by
spaces. See the mono(1) manual page or run mono --help.
WINDOWS VISUAL STUDIO ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
VisualStudioVersion
Visual Studio version used in mkbundle build. Default, latest
installed Visual Studio version. Values, "14.0" for Visual Stu-
dio 2015 or "15.0" for Visual Studio 2017.
WindowsSdkVersion
Windows SDK version used in mkbundle build. Default/unknown,
latest installed Windows SDK. Values, "8.1", "10.0.10240.0",
"10.0.15063.0" etc.
VSCMD_ARG_TGT_ARCH
Output target architecture used in mkbundle build. Default/un-
known, use architecture of .NET runtime executing mkbundle.
Values, "x86" or "x64". NOTE, when running from a Visual Studio
command prompt, this variable should already be set by the com-
mand prompt and match the rest of that build environment.
INCLUDE
Override all custom include paths passed to "cl.exe". Prede-
fined by Visual Studio developer command prompt or auto detected
by mkbundle when undefined.
LIB Override all custom library paths passed to "link.exe". Prede-
fined by Visual Studio developer command prompt or auto detected
by mkbundle when undefined.
MONOPREFIX
Use a custom Mono SDK install root matching the output target
architecture (x86/x64). Default, mkbundle will look for in-
stalled Mono SDK’s matching targeted architecture.
MONOLIB
Use a different mono library name or an absolute path to the
mono library passed to linker. Default, mkbundle will use de-
fault mono library name depending on mkbundle dynamic/static use
case. NOTE, supplied mono library needs to match mkbundle dy-
namic/static use case and target architecture.
VCCRT Override C-runtime library linker settings. Default "MD", mk-
bundle will use dynamic C-runtime linking on Windows compatible
with Mono SDK distribution. If a custom built Mono runtime us-
ing static C-Runtime linkage is used, setting this variable to
"MT" will link using static C-runtime libraries.
VCSUBSYSTEM
Override Windows subsystem. Default, "windows". If console sub-
system is preferred, use "console". NOTE, if console output is
expected from output target process then set this variable to
"console".
FILES
This program will load referenced assemblies from the Mono assembly
cache.
Targets are loaded from ~/.mono/targets/TARGETNAME/mono
BUGS
MAILING LISTS
Visit http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-devel-list for de-
tails.
WEB SITE
Visit: http://www.mono-project.com for details
SEE ALSO
mcs(1),mono(1),mono-config(5).
Mono(mkbundle)
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