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I installed .net core from this site. Playing with it, together with ASP.NET Core, led to a number of semi-related questions:

  1. My machine had a fresh install of VS 2015 update 1 just a few days ago...it already had Microsoft Web Developer Tools included in the install. Despite this, the .net core MSI installer I used apparently did install the missing .net core capability. If ASP.NET Core depends on .Net Core, why this upside-down behavior?
  2. Why are the dnx and dnu commands not available on the command line, until Visual Studio 2015 has opened a file? That is a twilight zone end-user-experience. Shouldn't those CLI tools have been available to me merely by installing .Net Core?
  3. I can understand the existence of an installer for .Net Core, but why is there a stand-alone installer for ASP.NET Core? Shouldn't it be possible to setup and build an ASP.NET Core project merely by using the tools provided by .Net Core? Isn't ASP.NET Core merely an additional layer of NuGet packages?
  4. What is the roadmap for command line tools "dnx, dnu, and dnvm" in relation to the "dotnet" CLI tool? I read perhaps a dozen different articles on this, and they all seem to subtly contradict eachother. For example, are "dnx, dnu, and dnvm" going away eventually? Or will they always remain, and the "dotnet" CLI tool will simply be a convenience wrapper? As is, I get the vague impression that the "dotnet" CLI tool is associated with .Net Core, and the "dnx, dnu, dnvm" tools are associated with ASP.NET Core. Please straighten me out.
  5. What is the official list of build framework options, and their explanation. I'm referring to the "frameworks" element in the project.json. Every time I see a list of these, shortly afterwards I discover a new framework that wasn't on the list.

Actually, I'm also curious about the .Net Core "Getting Started" link (beginning of this post) that I used to install .Net Core. I couldn't find any Microsoft site that linked to it. Instead I simply found it via a google search. That makes me uncomfortable...is it really "the" portal for installing .Net Core? Is there another?

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  • Not a constructive comment but I think the whole naming scheme is fantastically bad since it totally destroys any chance to find relevant documentation on the web. Took me a while to get that asp.net core can run with .net core or .net 4.7. Commented Jan 27, 2018 at 17:21

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  1. Visual Studio 2015 RTM'd without ASP.NET Core. It means that it's not bundled with it. Hence, the need to install its own separate installer.
  2. dnvm should work from command line. The installer should've added a path to %userprofile%\.dnx\bin to your PATH environment variable. dnx and dnu needs to know which runtime you want to run it under so it may not be available at first from command line unless you specify the runtime by running dnvm use %runtime% or dnvm use default.
  3. .NET Core is the runtime. It is not a nuget package. When you install ASP.NET Core, you're installing the tooling for Visual Studio. Not too sure what you get using the OSX or nix installer though. Probably just pre-installs the packages.
  4. dnvm, dnu, and dnx will eventually go away once RC2 is released. They will all be replaced by a single dotnet command.
  5. There isn't an official framework list. It would mostly depend on which platform you want to run your project under. Here are some articles (1, 2) that should clear up what these monikers mean. Normally you'd use net* if you want to use the full framework and dnx* if your just need the core stuff.

Also, the the first link in the beginning of your post links to the installer for their "dev" (unstable) branch. I recommend playing with RC1, until they officially release RC2.

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To clarify the previous answer for question 3: ".NET Core is the runtime. It is not a nuget package." is a bit vague statement. You should first define what you mean by .NET Core. An awful lot of .NET Core functionality is actually delivered as NuGet packages. You get an idea if you start here: https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.NETCore/

Starting from RC2, the only bits that are not NuGet packages, is the CLI toolset. You need to install .NET CLI on your target environment and everything else is deployed as packages.

Further, ASP.NET Core is built on top of .NET Core, not bundled with it. An analogy: Today FCL is what comes with the framework, but there are additions on top of it like, say, SignalR. So .NET Core class library (CoreFX) is the basic building blocks and ASP.NET Core is an additional layer on top of it.

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