ERRMSG: Failed to Load ASP.NET Core Runtime (.NET 6 / 7 / 8)


If you are building/testing/deploying .NET 6 / 7 / 8 web apps with DotImage and you run into a 503 error about

Failed to load ASP.NET Core runtime

If you search this on the web you may find that the common wisdom is you need the requisite Hosting bundle from Microsoft

.NET 6, .NET 7 (out of supprot), .NET 8.0, .NET 8.0.1

HOWEVER, DotImage has a hard dependency on Windows forms which means you must install the Desktop runtime for the .NET framework in question

.NET 6 x64 / x86

.NET 7 x64 / x86 (no longer supported)

.NET 8.0 x64 / x86

.NET 8.0.1 x64 / x86

This is for .NET 6 / 8  (7 is now end of life and 9 is still beta but will not be LTS (Long term support))

 For .NET Framework please see INFO: .NET 4.x Deployment Errors