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OutputType not changed from Exe to WinExe for Windows Forms and WPF projects

  • Article

In .NET 5, a change was made to automatically change OutputType from Exe to WinExe for WPF and Windows Forms apps. In .NET 6, we are reverting that change and OutputType will no longer be changed by the SDK.

Version introduced

.NET 6 RC 1

Previous behavior

If a project targeted .NET 5 or higher, OutputType was set to Exe, and UseWindowsForms or UseWPF was set to true, then the .NET SDK would change OutputType to WinExe.

New behavior

OutputType is no longer changed from what's in the project file.

<PropertyGroup>
  <OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
</PropertyGroup>

Change category

This change might affect source compatibility.

Reason for change

The .NET 5 change was intended to simplify .NET MAUI apps, so that OutputType wouldn't need to be conditioned on the target framework. However:

  • Automatically inferring OutputType broke user expectations and frustrated developers. For more information, see dotnet/sdk#16563 and its linked issues.
  • .NET MAUI apps will use WinUI by default, not Windows Forms or WPF, so the automatic inference doesn't even apply to .NET MAUI apps.

If you relied on the fact that OutputType was changed from Exe to WinExe, you should explicitly set it to WinExe in the project file.

If you were impacted by the previous breaking change and had to set DisableWinExeOutputInference in order to disable the logic that was added in .NET 5, you can remove that property now.

Affected APIs

N/A

See also