setup-dotnet

This action sets up a .NET CLI environment for use in actions by:

• optionally downloading and caching a version(s) of dotnet by SDK version(s) and adding to PATH
• registering problem matchers for error output
• setting up authentication to private package sources like GitHub Packages

Note: GitHub hosted runners have some versions of the .NET SDK preinstalled. Installed versions are subject to change. Please refer to the documentation: Software installed on github hosted runners for .NET SDK versions that are currently available.

Breaking changes in V5

• Upgraded action from node20 to node24

  Make sure your runner is on version v2.327.1 or later to ensure compatibility with this release. see Release Notes

For more details, see the full release notes on the release page

Usage

See action.yml

Basic:

steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v6
- uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v5
  with:
    dotnet-version: '8.0.x'
- run: dotnet build <my project>

Warning: Unless a concrete version is specified in the global.json file, the latest .NET version installed on the runner (including preinstalled versions) will be used by default. Please refer to the documentation for the currently preinstalled .NET SDK versions.

Multiple version installation:

steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v6
- name: Setup dotnet
  uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v5
  with:
    dotnet-version: | 
      8.0.x
      9.0.x
- run: dotnet build <my project>

Supported version syntax

The dotnet-version input supports following syntax:

• A.B.C (e.g 9.0.308, 10.0.100-preview.1.25120.13) - installs exact version of .NET SDK
• A.B or A.B.x (e.g. 8.0, 8.0.x) - installs the latest patch version of .NET SDK on the channel 8.0, including prerelease versions (preview, rc)
• A or A.x (e.g. 8, 8.x) - installs the latest minor version of the specified major tag, including prerelease versions (preview, rc)
• A.B.Cxx (e.g. 8.0.4xx) - available since .NET 5.0 release. Installs the latest version of the specific SDK release, including prerelease versions (preview, rc).
• latest - dynamically resolves to the highest active .NET SDK version. By default, it installs the latest stable (GA) version (excluding previews and end-of-life releases). Can be combined with dotnet-channel and dotnet-quality.

Using with dotnet-channel input

The optional dotnet-channel input specifies the source channel for the installation. Supported values:

Value	Description
STS	The most recent Standard Term Support release
LTS	The most recent Long Term Support release
A.B (e.g. 8.0)	A specific release channel
A.B.Cxx (e.g. 8.0.1xx)	A specific SDK release (available since 5.0)

Note: The dotnet-channel input is only applied when dotnet-version is set to latest. If used with a specific version, a warning will be logged and the channel input will be ignored.

Install latest LTS version:

steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v6
- uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v5
  with:
    dotnet-version: latest
    dotnet-channel: LTS

Using the architecture input

Using the architecture input, it is possible to specify the required .NET SDK architecture. Possible values: x64, x86, arm64, amd64, arm, s390x, ppc64le, riscv64. If the input is not specified, the architecture defaults to the host OS architecture (not all of the architectures are available on all platforms).

Example: Install multiple SDK versions for a specific architecture

steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v6
- name: Setup dotnet (x86)
  uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v5
  with:
    dotnet-version: |
      8.0.x
      9.0.x
    architecture: x86
- run: dotnet build <my project>

Using the dotnet-quality input

The dotnet-quality input installs the latest build of the specified quality in the channel. Supported values: daily, preview, ga.

Note: When used with a specific SDK version, dotnet-quality supports only A.B, A.B.x, A, A.x, and A.B.Cxx formats where the major version is higher than 5. For all other formats, dotnet-quality will be ignored.

steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v6
- uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v5
  with:
    dotnet-version: '8.0.x'
    dotnet-quality: 'preview'
- run: dotnet build <my project>

dotnet-quality can also be combined with dotnet-version: latest and dotnet-channel to target specific builds such as the latest daily build from the LTS channel.

steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v6
- uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v5
  with:
    dotnet-version: latest
    dotnet-channel: LTS
    dotnet-quality: daily

Using the global-json-file input

setup-dotnet action can read .NET SDK version from a global.json file. Input global-json-file is used for specifying the path to the global.json. If the file that was supplied to global-json-file input doesn't exist, the action will fail with error.

Note: In case both dotnet-version and global-json-file inputs are used, versions from both inputs will be installed.

steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v6
- uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v5
  with:
    global-json-file: csharp/global.json
- run: dotnet build <my project>
  working-directory: csharp

Note: The action supports latest* variants of the rollForward field in global.json. When set to latestPatch, latestFeature, latestMinor, or latestMajor, the action installs the appropriate SDK version. For prerelease versions, the exact pinned version is always installed regardless of the rollForward setting.

Caching NuGet Packages

The action has a built-in functionality for caching and restoring dependencies. It uses toolkit/cache under the hood for caching global packages data but requires less configuration settings. The cache input is optional, and caching is turned off by default.

The action searches for NuGet Lock files (packages.lock.json) in the repository root, calculates their hash and uses it as a part of the cache key. If lock file does not exist, this action throws error. Use cache-dependency-path for cases when multiple dependency files are used, or they are located in different subdirectories.

Warning: Caching NuGet packages is available since .NET SDK 2.1.500 and 2.2.100 as the NuGet lock file is available only for NuGet 4.9 and above.

steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v6
- uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v5
  with:
    dotnet-version: 8.x
    cache: true
- run: dotnet restore --locked-mode

Note: This action will only restore global-packages folder, so you will probably get the NU1403 error when running dotnet restore. To avoid this, you can use DisableImplicitNuGetFallbackFolder option.

<PropertyGroup>
  <DisableImplicitNuGetFallbackFolder>true</DisableImplicitNuGetFallbackFolder>
</PropertyGroup>

Reduce caching size

Note: Use NUGET_PACKAGES environment variable if available. Some action runners already has huge libraries. (ex. Xamarin)

env:
  NUGET_PACKAGES: ${{ github.workspace }}/.nuget/packages
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v6
- uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v5
  with:
    dotnet-version: 8.x
    cache: true
- run: dotnet restore --locked-mode

Caching NuGet packages in monorepos

env:
  NUGET_PACKAGES: ${{ github.workspace }}/.nuget/packages
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v6
- uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v5
  with:
    dotnet-version: 8.x
    cache: true
    cache-dependency-path: subdir/packages.lock.json
- run: dotnet restore --locked-mode

Matrix Testing

Using setup-dotnet it's possible to use matrix syntax to install several versions of .NET SDK:

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    strategy:
      matrix:
        dotnet: [ '8.0.x', '9.0.x', '10.0.x' ]
    name: Dotnet ${{ matrix.dotnet }} sample
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6
      - name: Setup dotnet
        uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v5
        with:
          dotnet-version: ${{ matrix.dotnet }}
      - name: Execute dotnet
        run: dotnet build <my project>

Note: Unless a concrete version is specified in the global.json file, the latest .NET version installed on the runner (including preinstalled versions) will be used by default. To control this behavior you may want to use temporary global.json files:

Matrix testing with temporary global.json creation

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    strategy:
      matrix:
        dotnet: [ '8.0.x', '9.0.x', '10.0.x' ]
    name: Dotnet ${{ matrix.dotnet }} sample
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6
      - name: Setup dotnet
        uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v5
        id: stepid
        with:
          dotnet-version: ${{ matrix.dotnet }}
      - name: Create temporary global.json
        run: |
          echo '{"sdk":{"version": "${{ steps.stepid.outputs.dotnet-version }}"}}' > ./global.json
      - name: Execute dotnet
        run: dotnet build <my project>

Note: When generating a temporary global.json within your workflow on Windows, ensure the command is executed using a shell such as PowerShell Core (pwsh) or bash (where supported) to avoid formatting inconsistencies that could cause .NET commands to fail.

Setting up authentication for nuget feeds

Github Package Registry (GPR)

steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v6
- uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v5
  with:
    dotnet-version: '8.0.x'
    source-url: https://nuget.pkg.github.com/<owner>/index.json
  env:
    NUGET_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}
- run: dotnet build <my project>
- name: Create the package
  run: dotnet pack --configuration Release <my project>
- name: Publish the package to GPR
  run: dotnet nuget push <my project>/bin/Release/*.nupkg

Azure Artifacts

- uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v5
  with:
    source-url: https://pkgs.dev.azure.com/<your-organization>/_packaging/<your-feed-name>/nuget/v3/index.json
  env:
    NUGET_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{secrets.AZURE_DEVOPS_PAT}} # Note, create a secret with this name in Settings
- name: Publish the package to Azure Artifacts
  run: dotnet nuget push <my project>/bin/Release/*.nupkg

nuget.org

- uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v5
  with:
    dotnet-version: 8.0.x
- name: Publish the package to nuget.org
  run: dotnet nuget push */bin/Release/*.nupkg -k $NUGET_AUTH_TOKEN -s https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json
  env:
    NUGET_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.NUGET_TOKEN }}

Note: It's the only way to push a package to nuget.org feed for macOS/Linux machines due to API key config store limitations.

Using the workloads input

The workloads input allows you to install .NET workloads as part of the SDK setup. Workloads provide additional platform tools and dependencies for frameworks. This action automatically runs dotnet workload update before installing the specified workloads to ensure manifests are refreshed and existing workloads are updated to their latest compatible versions.

steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v5
- name: Setup .NET with workloads
  uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v5
  with:
    dotnet-version: '9.0.x'
    workloads: workload1, workload2  # Specify the workloads required for the project, such as wasm-tools, maui, etc.
- run: dotnet build <my project>

Note: Ensure workloads are compatible with your runner's OS, architecture, and .NET SDK version before enabling workload installation. Some workloads may require additional installation time due to large toolchain downloads.

Outputs and environment variables

Outputs

dotnet-version

Using the dotnet-version output it's possible to get the installed by the action .NET SDK version.

Single version installation

In case of a single version installation, the dotnet-version output contains the version that is install