System.Drawing.Common Alternatives (.NET 7 & Non-Windows)

In .NET6 and .NET7, Microsoft has stopped supporting Linux and MacOs, and System.Drawing.Common will only work on Windows.

  • On non-Windows operating systems, a TypeInitializationException exception is thrown with PlatformNotSupportedException as the inner exception.
  • In .NET 6, the platform analyzer emits compile-time warnings when referencing code is compiled for non-Windows operating systems. In addition, the following run-time exception is thrown unless you set a configuration option:
System.TypeInitializationException : The type initializer for 'Gdip' threw an exception.
---- System.PlatformNotSupportedException : System.Drawing.Common is not supported on non-Windows platforms.
Temporary work-around in .NET6:
Enable support for non-Windows platforms by setting the System.Drawing.EnableUnixSupport runtime configuration switch to true in the runtimeconfig.json file:
{
   "runtimeOptions": {
      "configProperties": {
         "System.Drawing.EnableUnixSupport": true
      }
   }
}

Add the following code to the beginning of your code:

System.AppContext.SetSwitch("System.Drawing.EnableUnixSupport", true);

.NET7

With the release of .NET7, Microsoft has removed the work-around - completely removing support for System.Drawing.Common in Linux and MacOs.

Iron Software has released an open-source replacement to System.Drawing.Common, call IronSoftware.Drawing. [ NuGet] [GitHub]

To learn more: https://ironsoftware.com/open-source/csharp/drawing/docs/