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Deploy .NET apps

Overview

Clever Cloud allows you to deploy .NET web applications. This page will explain you how to set up your application to run it on our service.

You do not need to change a lot in your application, the requirements will help you to configure your apps with some mandatory files to add, and properties to setup.

Create an application on Clever Cloud

via the web console

  1. Create a new app by clicking on the Add an Application button, in the sidebar.
  2. Select a brand new instance (or a repository from GitHub if your account is linked).
  3. Then select .NET in the platform list.
  4. Configure your scaling options.
  5. Enter your application’s name and description and click “Next”. You can also select the region you want (North America or Europe).

Refer to the getting started for more details on application creation via the console.

via the Clever Tools CLI

  1. Make sure you have clever-tools installed locally. Report to the getting started.
  2. In your code folder, do clever create --type <type> <app-name> --region <zone> --org <org> where type is the type of technology you rely on, app-name the name you want for your application, zone deployment zone (par for Paris and mtl for Montreal), and org the organization ID the application will be created under.

Refer to the documentation for more details on application creation with Clever Tools.

Setting up environment variables on Clever Cloud

With the Clever Cloud console

  1. Go to the Clever Cloud console, and find the app you want to fine tune under it’s organization.
  2. Find the Environment variables menu and select it.
  3. In this menu, you will see a form with VARIABLE_NAME and variable value fields. Fill them with the desired values then select Create.

With the Clever Tools CLI

  1. Make sure you have clever-tools installed locally. Report to the getting started
  2. In your code folder, do clever env set <variable-name> <variable-value>

Refer to environment variables reference for more details on available environment variables on Clever Cloud. You can of course create custom ones with the interface we just demonstrated, they will be available for your application.

Configure your Dotnet application

.NET version

The default version used on Clever Cloud is 5.0. You can change it to 3.1 by setting the CC_DOTNET_VERSION environment variable to 3.1. No support will be provided for end-of-life versions.

Requirements

Be sure that:

  • You have pushed in master branch.
  • You listen on port 8080, by default each .NET application is created with the ASPNETCORE_URLS="http://0.0.0.0:8080" environment variable.
  • You have committed the different files of your project and the corresponding project file (.csproj, .fsproj or .vbproj).

Let’s take an example with the Microsoft TodoApi project.

During deployment, the TodoApi.csproj file and the target framework netcoreapp3.1 are automatically detected. Then, the .NET project is published:

dotnet publish --framework netcoreapp3.1 --configuration Release

No additional configuration is required (unless multiple project files or target frameworks are present, see the documentation below).

Multiple project files in the repository

If multiple project files are present in your repository, you can specify the file to use (without the .*proj extension) with the CC_DOTNET_PROJ environment variable.

CC_DOTNET_PROJ=TodoApi2

Multiple binary targets

If your project file defines multiple targets, like :

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Web">

<PropertyGroup>
<TargetFramework>netcoreapp3.0;netcoreapp3.1</TargetFramework>
</PropertyGroup>
…

You must specify the one you want to run, with the CC_DOTNET_TFM environment variable.

If CC_DOTNET_TFM is specified, then the executable produced by this target is used to start the application.

CC_DOTNET_TFM=netcoreapp3.1

Dependencies

Make sure to list all your dependencies in your project file. For example:

  ...
  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="EntityFramework" Version="6.4.0" />
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.CodeGeneration.Design" Version="3.1.2" />
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Tools" Version="3.1.3">
      <IncludeAssets>runtime; build; native; contentfiles; analyzers; buildtransitive</IncludeAssets>
      <PrivateAssets>all</PrivateAssets>
    </PackageReference>
  </ItemGroup>
</Project>

Compiled dependencies are cached by default to speed up deployments. You can disable dependencies caching completely by removing the CC_CACHE_DEPENDENCIES environment variable.

If you want to rebuild your application from scratch, you can select “rebuild and restart” from the console or launch clever restart --without-cache from CLI

Configure profile

The default profile is Release but you can use the CC_DOTNET_PROFILE environment variable to change this configuration.

CC_DOTNET_PROFILE=Debug

Custom run command

If you need to run a custom command (or just pass options to the program), you can specify it through the CC_RUN_COMMAND environment variable.

For instance, you can have CC_RUN_COMMAND=./bin/Release/net5.0/myapp <options>.

Private dependencies

Support for private dependencies will be available soon.

Git Deployment on Clever Cloud

You need git on your computer to deploy via this tool. Here is the official website of Git to get more information: git-scm.com

Setting up your remotes

  1. The “Information” page of your app gives you your git deployment URL. It looks like this: git+ssh://[email protected]/<your_app_id>.git. Copy it in your clipboard.

  2. Locally, under your code folder, type in git init to set up a new git repository or skip this step if you already have one.

  3. Add the deploy URL with git remote add <name> <your-git-deployment-url>.

  4. Add your files via git add <files path> and commit them via git commit -m <your commit message>.

  5. Now push your application on Clever Cloud with git push <name> master

Refer to the quickstart for more details on git deployments.

Linking a database or any other add-on to your application

By linking an application to an add-on, the application has the add-on environment variables in its own environment by default.

On add-on creation

Many add-ons do exist on Clever Cloud, please refer to the full list and check add-ons dedicated pages for full instructions.

During add-on creation, you will see Applications screen, with a list of your applications. You can toggle the button to Link and click next. If you finish the process of add-on creation, the application will automatically be linked to it.

Add-on already exists

In the Clever Cloud console, under the Service Dependencies menu of your application, you can use the Link addons dropdown menu to select the name of the add-on you want to link and use the add button to finish the process.

You can also link another application from the same page in the Clever Cloud console, using the Link applications dropdown menu.

More configuration

Need more configuration? To run a script at the end of your deployment? To add your private SSH key to access private dependencies? Go check the Common configuration page.

You may want to have an advanced usage of your application, in which case we recommend you to read the Administrate documentation section.

If you can’t find something or have a specific need like using a non supported version of a particular software, please reach out to the support.

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