Linux Support

[ksaunder]

I am curious if there has been any attempt at getting a Linux compatible version? I have a fork of this repo where I am able to compile against netcoreapp3.1-windows just fine. However, since the Graphviz native libraries are windows specific I can't just use it on Linux. I am using the library from an Azure app service and it would be a lot cheaper if it could run on a Linux app service plan.

I spent a day diving into the C++ project to see what it might take to get a Linux version compiling. After that initial effort I thought it might be worth asking if you have already given this subject any thought and just haven't had time to do the work. If you do already have some ideas on the path forward here I would be willing to help progress Linux support if I can. As a disclaimer I am predominately a Windows C# developer myself, so I don't bring any significant C++ or Linux expertise, but this is an area of interest for me.

[chtenb]

I haven't tried making this work on linux and I'm not aware of anyone else doing so.

To have the same experience on linux as we currently have on windows we would have to include the linux version of the graphviz binaries and have some msbuild logic in place which copies the right files based on the selected platform. I'm personally not familiar with .NET development on linux, so I can't give much advice on this front at the moment. I don't have much trust in msbuild making this easy though. I've spent too much time making sure native build dependencies are copied correctly transitively to referencing projects. The current version seems to sort of work, but it's hacky and has some quirks (see #36).

We'd also have to look into whether https://github.com/Rubjerg/Graphviz.NetWrapper/blob/master/Rubjerg.Graphviz/ForeignFunctionInterface.cs will just work on linux, or if this FFI needs a linux specific version because e.g. the dll imports may be different.

[chtenb]

I've just added support for .netstandard2.0. This should make the transition to linux support easier.