Install the .NET SDK or the .NET Runtime on Alpine
Important
.NET 9 was released on November 12, 2024. It may take time for the packages to appear in the package manager feeds or for your specific Linux distribution to include it.
.NET is supported on Alpine and this article describes how to install .NET on Alpine. When an Alpine version falls out of support, .NET is no longer supported with that version.
If you're using Docker, consider using official .NET Docker images instead of installing .NET yourself.
Install the SDK (which includes the runtime) if you want to develop .NET apps. Or, if you only need to run apps, install the Runtime. If you're installing the Runtime, we suggest you install the ASP.NET Core Runtime as it includes both .NET and ASP.NET Core runtimes.
Use the dotnet --list-sdks and dotnet --list-runtimes commands to see which versions are installed. For more information, see How to check that .NET is already installed.
Supported distributions
The following table is a list of currently supported .NET releases and the versions of Alpine they're supported on. These versions remain supported until either the version of .NET reaches end-of-support or the version of Alpine reaches end-of-life.
| Alpine | Supported Version | Available in Package Manager |
|---|---|---|
| 3.20 | 9.0, 8.0 | 8.0, 6.0 |
| 3.19 | 9.0, 8.0 | 7.0, 6.0 |
| 3.18 | 8.0 | 7.0, 6.0 |
The following versions of .NET are ❌ no longer supported:
- .NET 7
- .NET 6
- .NET 5
- .NET Core 3.1
- .NET Core 3.0
- .NET Core 2.2
- .NET Core 2.1
- .NET Core 2.0
Install .NET
Not supported on Alpine 3.18.
Important
.NET 9 was released on November 12, 2024. It may take time for the packages to appear in the package manager feeds or for your specific Linux distribution to include it.
Install the SDK
The .NET SDK allows you to develop apps with .NET. If you install the .NET SDK, you don't need to install the corresponding runtime. To install the .NET SDK, run the following command:
sudo apk add dotnet9-sdk
To learn how to use the .NET CLI, see .NET CLI overview.
Install the runtime
The ASP.NET Core Runtime allows you to run apps that were made with .NET that didn't provide the runtime. The following command installs the ASP.NET Core Runtime, which is the most compatible runtime for .NET. In your terminal, run the following command:
sudo apk add aspnetcore9-runtime
As an alternative to the ASP.NET Core Runtime, you can install the .NET Runtime, which doesn't include ASP.NET Core support: replace aspnetcore9-runtime in the previous command with dotnet9-runtime:
sudo apk add dotnet9-runtime
To learn how to use the .NET CLI, see .NET CLI overview.
Supported architectures
The following table is a list of currently supported .NET releases and the architecture of Alpine they're supported on. These versions remain supported until either the version of .NET reaches end-of-support or the architecture of Alpine is supported#. Note that only x86_64, armv7, aarch64 is officially supported by Microsoft. Other architectures are supported by the distribution maintainers, and can be installed using the apk package manager.
| Architecture | .NET 9 | .NET 8 |
|---|---|---|
| x86_64 | 3.17, 3.18, 3.19, 3.20 | 3.17, 3.18, 3.19, 3.20 |
| x86 | None | None |
| aarch64 | 3.17, 3.18, 3.19, 3.20 | 3.17, 3.18, 3.19, 3.20 |
| armv7 | 3.17, 3.18, 3.19, 3.20 | 3.17, 3.18, 3.19, 3.20 |
| armhf | None | None |
| s390x | 3.17 | 3.17 |
| ppc64le | None | None |
| riscv64 | None | None |
Install preview versions
Preview and release candidate versions of .NET aren't available in package repositories. You can install previews and release candidates of .NET in one of the following ways:
Remove preview versions
When using a package manager to manage your installation of .NET, you may run into a conflict if you've previously installed a preview release. The package manager may interpret the non-preview release as an earlier version of .NET. To install the non-preview release, first uninstall the preview versions. For more information about uninstalling .NET, see How to remove the .NET Runtime and SDK.
Dependencies
When you install with a package manager, these libraries are installed for you. But, if you manually install .NET or you publish a self-contained app, you'll need to make sure these libraries are installed:
3.18+
- ca-certificates-bundle
- libgcc
- libssl3
- libstdc++
- zlib
- libgdiplus (if the .NET app requires the System.Drawing.Common assembly)
Use the apk add command to install the dependencies.
If the .NET app uses the System.Drawing.Common assembly, libgdiplus must be installed. For more information, see System.Drawing.Common only supported on Windows.
To install libgdiplus, run:
apk add libgdiplus
