Support statically linked NativeAOT distribution

[hez2010]

• Use SystemOperating APIs on .NET 6+. The NativeAOT compiler can remove all branches that don't fit target operating system, so Windows-specific APIs won't be linked on Linux platform.

[codecov-commenter]

Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 97.61905% with 1 line in your changes missing coverage. Please review.
✅ Project coverage is 78.67%. Comparing base (a9c2893) to head (191eb3e).
⚠️ Report is 76 commits behind head on master.

Files with missing lines	Patch %	Lines
SharpPcap/Tunneling/WinTap/WinTapDriver.cs	0.00%	1 Missing ⚠️

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##           master     #448      +/-   ##
==========================================
- Coverage   82.14%   78.67%   -3.48%     
==========================================
  Files          51       51              
  Lines        2823     2856      +33     
  Branches      312      312              
==========================================
- Hits         2319     2247      -72     
- Misses        383      503     +120     
+ Partials      121      106      -15     

☔ View full report in Codecov by Sentry.
📢 Have feedback on the report? Share it here.

🚀 New features to boost your workflow:

• ❄️ Test Analytics: Detect flaky tests, report on failures, and find test suite problems.

[kayoub5]

Use SystemOperating APIs on .NET 6+. The NativeAOT compiler can remove all branches that don't fit target operating system, so Windows-specific APIs won't be linked on Linux platform.

Are you experiencing a specific error with NativeAOT, or is this just an optimization?

Currently SharpPcap uses some runtime dynamic logic to detect so/dll filename, unfortunately there is no standard name that the code can be linked against in a cross platform way.
See https://github.com/dotpcap/sharppcap/blob/master/SharpPcap/LibPcap/LibPcapSafeNativeMethods.Resolver.cs

[hez2010]

there is no standard name

Actually .NET doesn't care about the prefix lib and the extension name in DllImport. A simple pcap should cover libpcap.so, libpcap.dylib and pcap.dll.

[hez2010]

Are you experiencing a specific error with NativeAOT, or is this just an optimization?

I encountered unresolved symbols error from the linker (because some Windows-specific P/Invoke doesn't get trimmed away on Linux) after enable static linking in NativeAOT. By using OperatingSystem APIs, the AOT compiler can just ignore the code path that doesn't belong to the target platform.

[kayoub5]

there is no standard name

Actually .NET doesn't care about the prefix lib and the extension name in DllImport. A simple pcap should cover libpcap.so, libpcap.dylib and pcap.dll.

In Ubuntu the so name is libpcap.so.0.8 instead of libpcap.so, depending on what apt package you install.

[kayoub5]

Are you experiencing a specific error with NativeAOT, or is this just an optimization?

I encountered unresolved symbols error from the linker (because some Windows-specific P/Invoke doesn't get trimmed away on Linux) after enable static linking in NativeAOT. By using OperatingSystem APIs, the AOT compiler can just ignore the code path that doesn't belong to the target platform.

What symbols did you get an error for?
It could be SetDllDirectory and not libpcap that's causing the issue

[hez2010]

In Ubuntu the so name is libpcap.so.0.8 instead of libpcap.so, depending on what apt package you install.

I think the package manager will create a symbolic link libpcap.so which is pointing to libpcap.so.0.8 automatically.

[hez2010]

What symbols did you get an error for?

The error message pointed to pcap_open, pcap_setbuff and pcap_setmintocopy explicitly.

[hez2010]

You can try to build https://github.com/hez2010/SysuSurf using dotnet publish -c Release -r linux-x64 /p:PublishAot=true, or dotnet publish -c Release -r linux-musl-x64 /p:PublishAot=true with .NET 8 preview 1 to verify whether it works.
And I've successfully built one using this PR version of SharpPcap, and uploaded the artifact to https://github.com/hez2010/SysuSurf/releases/download/v1.4/Linux_x64_distroless.zip. This binary can run on any x64 Linux without need of installing any dependency.

[kayoub5]

the idea itself is ok, but the pr breaks CI, especially remote pcap.

[hez2010]

Will try to figure out a way to use wpcap on Windows and pcap on Linux to fix the ci.

[hez2010]

the idea itself is ok, but the pr breaks CI, especially remote pcap.

Is RPCAP a Windows-only feature?

[kayoub5]

the idea itself is ok, but the pr breaks CI, especially remote pcap.

Is RPCAP a Windows-only feature?

it works in windows (winpcap), and in Linux (requires a configuration flag during build)
see

sharppcap/scripts/install-libpcap.sh

Line 26 in 4c958ee

./configure --enable-remote --disable-universal

[kayoub5]

there is no standard name

Actually .NET doesn't care about the prefix lib and the extension name in DllImport. A simple pcap should cover libpcap.so, libpcap.dylib and pcap.dll.

the dll name is wpcap.dll and not pcap.dll in windows, so standard donet library resolution logic won't work.

[kayoub5]

Any reason you have to use <DirectPInvoke Include="pcap" /> ?
if removed, the code should still work without any changes to sharppcap.

[hez2010]

Any reason you have to use <DirectPInvoke Include="pcap" /> ? if removed, the code should still work without any changes to sharppcap.

Only with DirectPInvoke can we statically linked the library into the binary.

[hez2010]

After passing --enable-remote --disable-universal to ./configure, I'm able to build it with pcap_open without issue now, so I revert the change to pcap_open.

[hez2010]

Not sure why CI is still failing, seems like some unrelated timeout issue?

[kayoub5]

Only with DirectPInvoke can we statically linked the library into the binary.

Why do you want to statically link it in the first place?

[hez2010]

Why do you want to statically link it in the first place?

I want to run it on my router, which is hard to have all dependencies installed. So I would prefer to build a distroless binary which statically links everything and can run directly from scratch.

[kayoub5]

As far as I see, using OperatingSystem.IsWindows / OperatingSystem.IsLinux is only required in those files

SharpPcap/LibPcap/LibPcapSafeNativeMethods.cs
SharpPcap/LibPcap/LibPcapLiveDevice.cs

Other files should not affect the linker, and the ugly check is not needed.

[hez2010]

@kayoub5 It turns out that the NativeAOT toolchain doesn't care about the library name at all. So let's keep using wpcap as the default library name.