[C#] Documentation on how to coordinate the external Onnxruntime-Extension

[GeorgeS2019]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Onnxruntime refers to the external repository Onnxruntime-Extension which is 9 month old. It is unclear what benefits to include the latest master branch of Onnxruntime-Extension. It is unclear for a given issue using Onnxruntime-extension in c#, which repository, onnxruntime or onnxruntime-extension to file an issue.

There are no samples or test for c# in onnxruntime-extension repo. Most of them are in c++

There is one test for c# related to onnxruntime-extension in onnxruntime csharp folder.

System information

• ONNX Runtime version (latest):

Describe the solution you'd like

We need an improvement supporting C# Custom Op development experience.

[First]
We need to address these feature requests

• 1: Basic build instruction to generate custom_op_library.dll
• 2: Provide custom_op_library.dll

to support better c# for onnxruntime-extension development experience.

[Second]
We need documentation and if possible c# project which combines c++ custom opt dll generation and the c# test project to test-driven the generated custom opt dll.

[GeorgeS2019]

The documentation could also include a reference to how to generate the custom op dll and onnx in pytorch and make that available in c# as a sample

[GeorgeS2019]

related issue: C# pre and postprocessing with opencvsharp for onnxruntime

[GeorgeS2019]

@wenbingl

A number of open issues in onnxruntime-extension can now be answered by e.g. csharp unit test here

• .NET Support status to onnxruntime-extension

[GeorgeS2019]

There is a need to clarify that the onnxruntime-extension repository to coordinate the development of contributed operators to be eventually integrated and embedded into the onnxruntime

[GeorgeS2019]

Related discussion: [C# Windows] Standardize the name of ortcustomops.dll

[GeorgeS2019]

The onnxruntime-extension deals with c api and how python access the contributed and custom operators

Onnxruntime provides the application interface for e.g. c#, java and c++ wrappers around the c api => developed in onnxruntime-extension for working with extended contributed and custom operators

[natke]

Hi @GeorgeS2019,

You can see an example of the extensions library being used in this tutorial: https://onnxruntime.ai/docs/tutorials/csharp/stable-diffusion-csharp.html. The DLL is included in the source code and loaded directly. In the upcoming release we will include a C# package.