dotnet-serve

The dotnet-serve is a simple command-line HTTP server.

It leverages dotnet-config to augment and reuse options so they don't have to be passed in constantly via the command line as arguments. The hierarchical nature of .netconfig makes it very convenient to centralize settings related to HTTPS, certificates and others globally (either at the user or system level), so that in most cases you just have to run dotnet serve from any folder and get a consistent behavior throughout your machine.

To save the options used in a particular run to the current directory's .netconfig, just append --save-options:

dotnet serve -p 8080 --gzip --cors --quiet --save-options

After running that command, a new .netconfig will be created (if there isn't one already there) with the following section for dotnet-serve:

[serve]
    port = 8080
    gzip
    cors
    quiet

You can also add multiple header, mime type mappings and exclude-file entries can be provided as individual variables, such as:

[serve]
    port = 8080
    header = X-H1: value
    header = X-H2: value
    mime = .cs=text/plain
    mime = .vb=text/plain
    mime = .fs=text/plain
    exclude-file = app.config
    exclude-file = appsettings.json

You can place those settings in any parent folder and it will be reused across all descendent folders, or they can also be saved to the global (user profile) or system locations. To easily configure these options at those levels, use the dotnet-config tool itself:

dotnet config --global --set serve.port 8000
dotnet config --global --add serve.mime .csproj=text/plain

This will default the port to 8000 whenever a port is not specified in the command line, and it will always add the given mime type mapping. You can open the saved .netconfig at %USERPROFILE%\.netconfig or ~/.netconfig.