[kcartlidge]

> Yes but the resulting .exe depends on like 20 installed .dlls. For starters, the .NET runtime, which will fundamentally limit where your app runs. Second updates in those underlying dlls and runtimes may prevent your app from working correctly.

Not these days (for newer codebases).

The DotNet Framework has that issue with the runtimes, but it's been a fair few years since Microsoft were suggesting people start new projects with the Framework for much other than WinForms.

The present and the future of DotNet is DotNet Core, which can produce cross-platform single-file stand-alone dependency-free binaries, well suited to a copy/paste deploy if you want.

That said, away from Windows you're a bit screwed for the GUI. It's a great flow for cross-platform console tools and web apps/servers though, especially with the free VS2019 Community Edition or, better still given it is many gigabytes less and cross-platform, with VS Code and the C# plugin.