grpc/src/csharp

gRPC C#

A C# implementation of gRPC.

Status

Alpha : Ready for early adopters.

Usage: Windows

• Prerequisites: .NET Framework 4.5+, Visual Studio 2013 with NuGet extension installed (VS2015 should work).

• Open Visual Studio and start a new project/solution.

• Add NuGet package Grpc as a dependency (Project options -> Manage NuGet Packages). That will also pull all the transitive dependencies (including the native libraries that gRPC C# is internally using).

• Helloworld project example can be found in https://github.com/grpc/grpc-common/tree/master/csharp.

Usage: Linux (Mono)

• Prerequisites: Mono 3.2.8+, MonoDevelop 5.9 with NuGet add-in installed.

• Install Linuxbrew and gRPC C Core using instructions in https://github.com/grpc/homebrew-grpc

• gRPC C# depends on native shared library libgrpc_csharp_ext.so (Unix flavor of grpc_csharp_ext.dll). This library will be installed to ~/.linuxbrew/lib by the previous step. To make it visible to mono, you need to:

  • (preferred approach) add libgrpc_csharp_ext.so to /etc/ld.so.cache by running:

    $ echo "$HOME/.linuxbrew/lib" | sudo tee /etc/ld.so.conf.d/zzz_brew_lib.conf
    $ sudo ldconfig
    

  • (adhoc approach) set LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to point to directory containing libgrpc_csharp_ext.so:

    $ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/.linuxbrew/lib:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
    

  • (if you are contributor) installing gRPC from sources using sudo make install_grpc_csharp_ext also works.

• Open MonoDevelop and start a new project/solution.

• Add NuGet package Grpc as a dependency (Project -> Add NuGet packages).

• Helloworld project example can be found in https://github.com/grpc/grpc-common/tree/master/csharp.

Usage: MacOS (Mono)

• WARNING: As of now gRPC C# only works on 64bit version of Mono (because we don't compile the native extension for C# in 32bit mode yet). That means your development experience with Xamarin Studio on MacOS will not be great, as you won't be able to run your code directly from Xamarin Studio (which requires 32bit version of Mono).

• Prerequisites: Xamarin Studio with NuGet add-in installed.

• Install Homebrew and gRPC C Core using instructions in https://github.com/grpc/homebrew-grpc

• Install 64-bit version of mono with command brew install mono (assumes you've already installed Homebrew).

• Open Xamarin Studio and start a new project/solution.

• Add NuGet package Grpc as a dependency (Project -> Add NuGet packages).

• You will be able to build your project in Xamarin Studio, but to run or test it, you will need to run it under 64-bit version of Mono.

• Helloworld project example can be found in https://github.com/grpc/grpc-common/tree/master/csharp.

Building: Windows

You only need to go through these steps if you are planning to develop gRPC C#. If you are a user of gRPC C#, go to Usage section above.

• Prerequisites for development: NET Framework 4.5+, Visual Studio 2013 (with NuGet and NUnit extensions installed).

• The grpc_csharp_ext native library needs to be built so you can build the Grpc C# solution. You can either build the native solution in vsprojects/grpc.sln from Visual Studio manually, or you can use a convenience batch script that builds everything for you.

  > buildall.bat
  

• Open Grpc.sln using Visual Studio 2013. NuGet dependencies will be restored upon build (you need to have NuGet add-in installed).

Building: Linux (Mono)

You only need to go through these steps if you are planning to develop gRPC C#. If you are a user of gRPC C#, go to Usage section above.

• Prerequisites for development: Mono 3.2.8+, MonoDevelop 5.9 with NuGet and NUnit add-ins installed.

  $ sudo apt-get install mono-devel
  $ sudo apt-get install nunit nunit-console
  

You can use older versions of MonoDevelop, but then you might need to restore NuGet dependencies manually (by nuget restore), because older versions of MonoDevelop don't support NuGet add-in.

• Compile and install the gRPC C# extension library (that will be used via P/Invoke from C#).

  $ make grpc_csharp_ext
  $ sudo make install_grpc_csharp_ext
  

• Use MonoDevelop to open the solution Grpc.sln

• Build the solution & run all the tests from test view.

Tests

gRPC C# is using NUnit as the testing framework.

Under Visual Studio, make sure NUnit test adapter is installed (under "Extensions and Updates"). Then you should be able to run all the tests using Test Explorer.

Under Monodevelop, make sure you installed "NUnit support" in Add-in manager. Then you should be able to run all the test from the Test View.

After building the solution, you can also run the tests from command line using nunit-console tool.

# from Grpc.Core.Test/bin/Debug directory
$ nunit-console Grpc.Core.Tests.dll

Contents

• ext: The extension library that wraps C API to be more digestible by C#.
• Grpc.Auth: gRPC OAuth2 support.
• Grpc.Core: The main gRPC C# library.
• Grpc.Examples: API examples for math.proto
• Grpc.Examples.MathClient: An example client that sends some requests to math server.
• Grpc.Examples.MathServer: An example client that sends some requests to math server.
• Grpc.IntegrationTesting: Cross-language gRPC implementation testing (interop testing).