# Dockerfile Generation

**IF YOUR PROJECT DOES NOT CONTAIN A DOCKERFILE, THE DEPLOYMENT TOOL WILL ATTEMPT TO AUTOMATICALLY GENERATE IT,** otherwise an existing Dockerfile will be used for deployment.

The Dockerfile the deployment tool generates uses Docker's multistage build process. This allows efficient and smaller container images that only contain the bits that are required to run your application.

For a sample web application which has following directory structure:

    ┃MyWebApplication/
    ┣ MyClassLibrary/
    ┃ ┣ Class1.cs
    ┃ ┗ MyClassLibrary.csproj
    ┣ MyWebApplication/
    ┃ ┣ Controllers/
    ┃ ┃ ┗ WeatherForecastController.cs
    ┃ ┣ appsettings.Development.json
    ┃ ┣ appsettings.json
    ┃ ┣ Dockerfile
    ┃ ┣ MyWebApplication.csproj
    ┃ ┣ Program.cs
    ┃ ┗ WeatherForecast.cs
    ┗ MyWebApplication.sln

### Build

Build stage consists of copying the files from the host machine to the container, restoring the dependencies, and building the application. Deployment Tool uses the directory containing the solution file (*.sln) as build context and generates file paths relative to that directory.

```
FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/core/aspnet:6.0 AS base
WORKDIR /app
EXPOSE 80
EXPOSE 443
WORKDIR /src
COPY ["MyWebApplication/MyWebApplication.csproj", "MyWebApplication/"]
COPY ["MyClassLibrary/MyClassLibrary.csproj", "MyClassLibrary/"]
RUN dotnet restore "MyWebApplication/MyWebApplication.csproj"
COPY . .
WORKDIR "/src/MyWebApplication"
RUN dotnet build "MyWebApplication.csproj" -c Release -o /app/build
```

### Publish

Publish stage takes the build output and publishes the .NET application to /app/publish directory.

```
FROM build AS publish
RUN dotnet publish "MyWebApplication.csproj" -c Release -o /app/publish
```

### Final

Final stage takes the publish output and copies it to the container which uses ASP.NET Core image as a base image.

```
FROM base AS final
WORKDIR /app
COPY --from=publish /app/publish .
ENTRYPOINT ["dotnet", "MyWebApplication.dll"]
```