Runnable

⚠️ Under Construction: This library is actively being developed and is not intended for production use yet. Monorepo for the ForgeTrust.Runnable projects

ForgeTrust.Runnable is a collection of .NET libraries designed to provide a lightweight, modular startup pipeline for both console and web applications.

Vision

The primary vision of Runnable is to simplify application bootstrapping by encouraging composition through small, focused modules. Instead of monolithic startup classes or scattered configuration logic, Runnable allows developers to encapsulate features into reusable modules that handle:

• Dependency Injection (DI) registration
• Host configuration
• Application-specific startup logic

This approach aims to:

• Share cross-cutting concerns between different application types (e.g., sharing logging or database setup between a Web API and a background Console worker).
• Keep applications minimal, with infrastructure heavily decoupled from business logic.
• Provide consistency in how applications are initialized and configured, regardless of whether they are web or console apps.

Key Design Goals

1. Modularity: Everything should be a module that does one thing well. Take what you need and don't get burdened by what you don't.
2. Consistency: A unified RunnableStartup pipeline for different project types.
3. Flexibility: Open for integration with external libraries (Autofac, OpenApi, etc.) and stick to framework provided abstractions where possible.
4. Performance: Designed to have minimal overhead on the application startup and execution.
5. Ease of Use: Simple APIs and clear patterns to make getting started frictionless.
6. Convention over Configuration: Sensible defaults are provided so only minimal configuration is required.
7. Secure By Default: Security best practices are applied automatically where appropriate.

Project Structure

Core

• ForgeTrust.Runnable.Core – Core abstractions for defining modules and starting an application via RunnableStartup and StartupContext.

Console

• ForgeTrust.Runnable.Console – Helpers for building command line apps with CliFx including a CriticalService based command runner and helpers for configuring services.

Web

• ForgeTrust.Runnable.Web – Bootstraps ASP.NET Core minimal API apps and lets modules register middleware, endpoints, and perform additional host configuration.
• ForgeTrust.Runnable.Web.OpenApi – Optional module that adds OpenAPI generation using AddEndpointsApiExplorer and WithOpenApi.
• ForgeTrust.Runnable.Web.Scalar – Optional module that serves the Scalar API reference UI and depends on the OpenAPI module.

Dependency

• ForgeTrust.Runnable.Dependency.Autofac – Optional integration with the Autofac IoC container so modules can participate in Autofac service registration.

Aspire

• ForgeTrust.Runnable.Aspire – Integration with .NET Aspire to provide a modular approach to defining distributed applications and service defaults.

These packages are designed to work together so that features can be shared across different application types while maintaining a consistent startup approach.

Getting started

Clone the repository and build the solution:

dotnet build
dotnet test --no-build

Check out the examples to see how modules are composed in practice:

dotnet run --project examples/console-app
dotnet run --project examples/web-app

Examples

The examples directory contains sample applications that demonstrate how to use this project.

• Console app example – builds a simple command line application using CliFx for command definitions.
• Web app example – shows a minimal ASP.NET Core app that composes middleware and endpoints from modules.

License

Runnable is licensed under the Polyform Small Business License 1.0.0.

Free for individuals and businesses with fewer than 100 people and under $1,000,000 USD prior-year revenue (inflation-adjusted). Larger companies require a commercial license.