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dotnet
sdk
C#2020–2026
dotnet / sdk

sdk

Core functionality needed to create .NET Core projects, that is shared between Visual Studio and CLI

46Distinct people
61Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
3.2KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Core functionality needed to create .NET Core projects, that is shared between Visual Studio and CLI

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/issues/6145 My favorite part is when someone figures out "telemetry" includes the MAC address, and the dev team just goes completely silent.

craftinator used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 10:02:05 AM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year61 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2020-05-21 14:25:34 UTC to 2026-07-27 09:32:34 UTC.

01020302020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 30 mentions; 4 submissions, 26 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 0 submissions, 8 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 1 submissions, 6 comments20232024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC30426
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC808
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC716
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
Welcome to dotnet sdk This repository contains core functionality needed to create .NET projects that are shared between Visual Studio and the .NET CLI. MSBuild tasks are under /src/Tasks/Microsoft.NET.Build.Tasks/. See dotnet/project-system for the project system work that is specific to Visual Studio. See the dotnetup documentation for work on the .NET toolchain manager. Dotnetup changes should target the release/dnup branch rather than main. Common project and item templates are found in template_feed. Build status Visibility All jobs Public Microsoft Internal Installing the SDK You can download the .NET SDK as either an installer (MSI, PKG) or a zip (zip, tar.gz). The .NET SDK contains both the .NET runtime and CLI tools. Official builds .NET SDK latest builds table Looking for dotnet-install sources? Sources for dotnet-install.sh and dotnet-install.ps1 are in the install-scripts repo. How do I engage and contribute? We welcome you to try things out, file issues, make feature requests and join us in design conversations. Be sure to check out our project documentation This project has adopted the .NET Foundation Code of Conduct to clarify expected behavior in our community. How do I build the SDK? Start with the Developer Guide. How do I test an SDK I have built? To test your locally built SDK, run eng\dogfood.cmd after building. That script starts a new Powershell with the environment configured to redirect SDK resolution to your build. From that shell your SDK is available in: any Visual Studio instance launched via & devenv.exe dotnet build msbuild How do I determine the timeline I must follow to get my changes in for a specific version of .NET? Please see the Pull Request Timeline Guide. How we triage and review PRs With the SDK repository being the home for many different areas, we've started trying to label incoming issues for the area they are related to using Area- labels. Then we rely on the codeowners to manage and triages issues in their areas. Feel free to contact the owners listed in that file if you're not getting a response on a particular issue or PR. Please try to label new issues as that'll help us route them faster. For issues related to the central SDK team, typically they are assigned out to a team member in the first half of each week. Then each member is asked to review and mark those needing further discussion as "needs team triage" and otherwise setting a milestone for the issue. Backlog means we will consider it in the future if there is more feedback. Discussion means we have asked for more information from the filer. All other milestones indicate our best estimate for when a fix will be targeted for noting that not all issues will get fixed. If you are not getting a quick response on an issue assigned to a team member, please ping them. The example query used for triage of .NET SDK issues can be viewed here For PRs, we assign a reviewer once a week on Wednesday, looking only at PRs that are green in the build. If you are contributing: Get the PR green. Include a test if possible. Mention @dotnet-cli if you want to raise visibility of the PR. License The .NET SDK project uses the MIT license. The LICENSE.txt and ThirdPartyNotices.txt in any downloaded archives are authoritative.
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

5 sources
It's not about being "cool" It's about the motives "it's open source" "it now works on linux" it all doesn't matter if they'll go after your ass if you dare build tooling with their debugger (jetbrains) or when they want to remove a feature overnight to make it exclusive to visual studio windows and behind a paywall https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/issues/22247 it's this kind of things that makes it hard to recommend it to people, and Microsoft can't be trusted
In Ask HN: Why is .NET never talked about as an option for solo/small team dev?
I hate to defend telemetry of all things but in this particular case the criticism is unfounded and lacks context: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/telemetry https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/telemetr... https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/tree/main/src/Cli/dotnet/Telem... In any case, Debian would use https://github.com/dotnet/source-build and dotnet/dotnet, and could easily include the argument or a patch for this. It’s unlikely to be an issue. My bet it was not in Debian because there was no one to take initiative yet or there was but that person has faced a backlash by people in Debian who are similar to vocal minority here that posts FUD because of their little personal crusade.
In Microsoft donates the Mono Project to the Wine team
FWIW .NET tooling telemetry can be easily opted-out, which the SDK explicitly tells you about, and there is a page that has full list of the kind of data that is collected (CLI usage metrics and tooling crash stack traces). You can also review the metrics yourself. About: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/telemetr... Collected metrics: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/telemetry Source code: https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/tree/main/src/Cli/dotnet/Telem... In either case, many teams have CIs with 'DOTNET_CLI_TELEMETRY_OPTOUT=1' and call it a day even if it makes no difference to them.
In Go 1.23 Released
They used to gather all command line arguments until they later decided that (oops!) it's "not acceptable per our privacy policies"[0] and they really shouldn't have been doing that. They have also had issues with anonymization not being implemented properly, the opt-out mechanism not working in some edge cases, forgetting to even tell users about the need to opt out, and who knows what else. The risk of accidentally exfiltrating your data one way or another seems pretty high. Also, monetary value is not the only reason you might want to keep information private. [0] https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/issues/6145#issuecomment-22010...
In Microsoft blocks Windows 11 workaround that enabled local accounts

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