Setup exe file version when publishing with dotnet

Question

I have a net core consoleapp project, as follows (VS 2017 style):

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
    <TargetFramework>netcoreapp1.1</TargetFramework>
    <Version>2.0.0</Version>
    <AssemblyVersion>3.0.0.0</AssemblyVersion>
    <FileVersion>4.0.0.0</FileVersion>
    <RuntimeIdentifiers>win10-x64</RuntimeIdentifiers>
    <RuntimeFrameworkVersion>1.0.4</RuntimeFrameworkVersion>
  </PropertyGroup>
</Project>

I can build the project without any issues, I can publish it using dotnet publish -r win10-x64 and it will generate an exe file together with the dll file. My problem is that the exe file has some strange FileVersion and ProductVersion fields (in my case FileVersion = 1.0.1.4500 and ProductVersion 1.0.1.cee57... (some guid)). Also the rest of the file details (name, copyrights) are related to dotnet instead of my own project.

Is there any way I can control the exe details when publishing?

Answer 1

No, the main build output of your project still is a .dll file, the .exe (or linux, mac executables) file is a copied and renamed dotnet.exe (or in case of upcoming 2.0 versions, apphost.exe with the dll name to run embedded).

The exe file is only a helper that boots the runtime and then loads your dll. However, you can try to use binary editing tools like editbin.exe (VS C++ Tools) to modify the file after publishing.