Our development process is very pleasant. We use VS Code, .NET Core and Ionide as an IDE. I find an IDE essential for languages with global type-inference.
For bundling, we use Core RT to create a self-contained application. This is then bundled using Warp (https://github.com/dgiagio/warp) to generate a single binary.
Thank you. If I read that correctly, the last line runs your artifact - is that for CI or something? (I'd expect the purpose was to just create the artifact?)
Ed: then again, your artifact is a build tool - does that build distribution packages?
Yes, the last line is for CI. It just runs the tool as a simple check that it built correctly. Cross-compilation does not work with Core RT anyway, so we can assume that you are always building for the host platform.
I remember I had a big fight with dot.net a year or two back, and gave up - but last time I checked the only thing I found missing was a bundler (like warp). And somewhat inconsistent/unclear documentation on how to make a stand alone build. But I did eventually manage to build "Hello, world!" on Linux and run it on windows as a proof of concept.
Ed: then again, your artifact is a build tool - does that build distribution packages?