Getting Started
AvaloniaUI Parcel is a packaging tool for Avalonia UI applications. It's designed as a two-app solution (GUI and console tool) that handles building, signing and packaging applications across Windows, macOS, and Linux platforms.
Prerequisites
| Requirement | Version/Details |
|---|---|
| .NET Runtime | 6.0 or newer |
| Windows | 10 or newer |
| macOS | 13 or newer |
| Linux | X11 and glibc 2.27 or musl 1.22.2 compatible distros |
Step 1: Installing AvaloniaUI Parcel
AvaloniaUI Parcel is a native .NET tool, with an update mechanism provided by the SDK.
This guide demonstrates global installation of the tool. Local installation is also possible but be aware: the tool will only work in the project that it's installed into.
- .NET 10+
- .NET 8/9
dotnet tool install --global AvaloniaUI.Parcel
If you are upgrading app from .NET 8/9 installation, you should first uninstall it with dotnet tool uninstall --global AvaloniaUI.Parcel.Windows or parcel uninstall.
Parcel can then be updated by running the dotnet tool update command.
Parcel update command
dotnet tool update --global AvaloniaUI.Parcel
I've you're using .NET SDK older than 10, you must install a specific package depending on the running platform.
Windows:
dotnet tool install --global AvaloniaUI.Parcel.Windows
macOS:
dotnet tool install --global AvaloniaUI.Parcel.macOS
Linux:
dotnet tool install --global AvaloniaUI.Parcel.Linux
Parcel can then be updated by running the dotnet tool update command.
Parcel update commands
Windows:
dotnet tool update --global AvaloniaUI.Parcel.Windows
macOS:
dotnet tool update --global AvaloniaUI.Parcel.macOS
Linux:
dotnet tool update --global AvaloniaUI.Parcel.Linux
Step 2: Run the tool
After installation, you can launch it from terminal using:
parcel
This command will run a GUI application where you can open or create parcel projects.
Alternatively, it's possible to run CLI commands from the terminal on an existing parcel project:
parcel pack ./SampleApp.parcel -r osx-x64 -p dmg -o ./artifacts
This command will bundle, sign and package the application into a dmg file from the pre-configured parcel project.
CLI is not available in the free community license.
Step 3: Activate the tool
Once the Parcel has opened, you will be asked to input AvaloniaUI Portal credentials that were used to license the tool.
For the CLI, you can set --licenseKey option or PARCEL_LICENSE_KEY env variable.