GameBundle 1.6.1

GameBundle is a tool to package MonoGame and other .NET applications into several distributable formats.

Installing

GameBundle is a dotnet tool, meaning you can install it very easily like so:

dotnet tool install --global GameBundle

Using

By default, GameBundle builds the .csproj file that it finds in the directory that it is run from. The bundled outputs go into bin/Bundled by default.

To build and bundle your app for Windows, Linux and Mac, all you have to do is run the following command from the directory that contains your project file:

gamebundle -wlm

GameBundle will then build a self-contained release of your application for each system using dotnet publish and clean up the output directory using NetCoreBeauty by moving most of the libraries into a Lib subdirectory.

Building a MonoGame Project

If you're building a MonoGame project using MonoGame's DesktopGL version 3.8.2.1105 or later, you can additionally supply the --mg argument to automatically exclude MonoGame's native libraries from being moved into the Lib subdirectory, which is a requirement for your game to run.

Configuring

GameBundle takes several optional arguments to modify the way it works. To see a list of all possible arguments, simply run

gamebundle --help

Here is a list of them as of GameBundle version 1.6.1:

  -s, --source              The location of the .csproj file that should be built and bundled. By default, the current directory is scanned for one

  -o, --output              (Default: bin/Bundled) The location of the directory that the bundles should be stored in

  -v, --verbose             Display verbose output while building

  -w, --win                 Bundle for windows

  -l, --linux               Bundle for linux

  -m, --mac                 Bundle for mac

  --win-rid                 (Default: win-x64) The RID to use for windows builds

  --linux-rid               (Default: linux-x64) The RID to use for linux builds

  --mac-rid                 (Default: osx-x64) The RID to use for mac builds

  -W, --win-arm             Bundle for windows arm

  -L, --linux-arm           Bundle for linux arm

  -M, --mac-arm             Bundle for mac arm

  --win-arm-rid             (Default: win-arm64) The RID to use for windows arm builds

  --linux-arm-rid           (Default: linux-arm64) The RID to use for linux arm builds

  --mac-arm-rid             (Default: osx-arm64) The RID to use for mac arm builds

  -z, --zip                 Store the build results in zip files instead of folders

  -b, --mac-bundle          Create an app bundle for mac

  --mac-bundle-resources    (Default: Content *.icns) When creating an app bundle for mac, things that should go into the Resources folder rather than the MacOS folder

  --mac-bundle-ignore       When creating an app bundle for mac, things that should be left out of the mac bundle and stay in the output folder

  --skip-lib                When bundling, skip beautifying the output by moving files to the library folder

  -e, --exclude             Files that should not be moved to the library folder

  --mg                      Exclude MonoGame's native libraries from being moved to the library folder, which is a requirement for DesktopGL version 3.8.2.1105 or later.
                            This has the same behavior as supplying the --exclude arguments soft_oal.dll, SDL2.dll, libopenal.so.1, libSDL2-2.0.so.0, libopenal.1.dylib and libSDL2.dylib

  --lib-name                (Default: Lib) The name of the library folder that is created

  -t, --trim                Trim the application when publishing

  -c, --config              (Default: Release) The build configuration to use

  -a, --build-args          Additional arguments that should be passed to the dotnet publish command

  -n, --name-builds         Name the build output directories by the name of the executable

  -N, --name-addition       An additional string of text that should be included in the names of the output directories

  -V, --include-version     Include the project's version in the names of the output directories

  --help                    Display this help screen.

  --version                 Display version information.