Corelink C# Client Library
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Installation

Notes

These documents are a work in progress, and we are trying to improve upon them on a daily basis. However, given our capacity and workload, there are bound to be things which get missed or checked in which should not have been checked in. If you find mistakes or documents wanting information, and you would like to help, you can do so in two ways

  1. Submit corrections. When you update anything and submit a PR, we will review it and if all looks good, it will be added. This is the fastest way that one can expect changes to be in.
  2. Submit tickets. If you are not sure how to make updates, or if you are short on time, please raise an issue in the repo, with details and what you think needs to be the expected text. We will try and update the literature to reflect any changes that we feel are merited. Note that this route will take longer than the first approach and there are no guarantees on the timeline.

Dependencies

The Corelink C# client has two dependencies:

  • .NET 8.0 SDK or later — provides the runtime, compiler, and standard library. All networking functionality (System.Net.WebSockets, System.Net.Sockets) is part of the .NET Base Class Library and requires no separate installation.
  • Newtonsoft.Json v13.0.3 — used for JSON serialization and deserialization throughout the control channel. This is declared in csharp.csproj and installed automatically by dotnet restore.

There are no native library dependencies, no header files to locate, and no linker paths to configure. The .NET toolchain handles everything.

Prerequisites

.NET SDK

You will need the .NET 8.0 SDK (or later) installed on your machine. It is cross-platform and runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Windows

winget install Microsoft.DotNet.SDK.8

Or download the installer from the official site: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download

macOS

brew install dotnet

Linux

Install via your distribution's package manager. For example, on Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y dotnet-sdk-8.0

For other distributions, refer to: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/install/linux

Verifying the installation

dotnet --version

This should print 8.x.x or later.

IDE (optional)

The C# client can be built and run entirely from the command line. If you prefer an IDE:

  • Visual Studio 2022 (Windows/macOS) — full IDE with NuGet integration
  • JetBrains Rider (Windows/macOS/Linux) — cross-platform .NET IDE
  • Visual Studio Code with the C# Dev Kit extension — lightweight, cross-platform

Corelink Client Installation

Clone the corelink-client repository:

git clone https://dev.hsrn.nyu.edu/corelink/corelink-client.git

The C# client is located in the csharp/ subdirectory:

corelink-client/
└── csharp/
├── csharp/ # Source files (.csproj + Core/ + Example/)
├── docs/ # This documentation
└── README.md

Installing dependencies

Navigate to the project directory and restore NuGet packages:

cd csharp/csharp
dotnet restore

dotnet restore reads csharp.csproj and downloads Newtonsoft.Json automatically. No manual steps are required.

Building the project

dotnet build

This compiles the project and reports any errors or warnings. Fix all warnings before submitting a merge request.

Running the examples

dotnet run

See the setup examples document for the full list of run modes and CLI options.

Closing remarks

  • The "installation" for the C# client is simply installing the .NET SDK and running dotnet restore. There are no native libraries, no CMake, and no platform-specific header or library paths to configure.
  • These steps work on Windows, macOS, and mainstream Linux distributions. Any system that supports .NET 8.0 should work without modification.