Support for .Net Standard 2.0

[adarmus]

We are referencing Insight from an internal shared library that targets .Net Standard 2.0 (which in turn is consumed by various projects that target various .Net releases, including .Net 8).

Would it be possible for v8.x to support targeting Standard 2.0 (it is still supported by .Net 8 itself - https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/dotnet-standard)?

Dotnet version: [standard2.0]
Database: [SQL Server]
Library version: [8.0.1]

Many thanks, Adam

[jonwagner]

I see - it looks like I misunderstood the "standard" vs "version" designations. I should be able to put netstandard2.0 back. it should be easier than supporting "framework" builds give me a few days.

[adarmus]

Brilliant, thanks.

…

On Tue, 17 Dec 2024, 16:51 Jon Wagner, ***@***.***> wrote: I see - it looks like I misunderstood the "standard" vs "version" designations. I should be able to put netstandard2.0 back. it should be easier than supporting "framework" builds give me a few days. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#519 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AB42SFTAIA3PSFSVJKCBD632GBJAFAVCNFSM6AAAAABTWQWMESVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDKNBZGAYTGOJZGU> . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[jonwagner]

I researched what other libraries are doing with .net standard.

• Official Microsoft statement - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/the-future-of-net-standard/#.net-5-as-the-combination-of-.net-standard-&-.net-core
• DevExpress rationale - I don't use dev express but the logic here is sound - https://community.devexpress.com/blogs/news/archive/2023/07/05/net-net-standard-2-0-deprecation-support-for-net-6-or-net-8-lts-by-default-in-libraries-and-more-v23-2.aspx

TL;DR - .netstandard2.0 is dead.

I tried to put it back and support it, but the latest versions of some dependencies (e.g. nUnit for testing) no longer support .netstandard2.0.

Given the rationale in the DevExpress notes and the position popular libraries like nUnit have taken, I think the best approach is to:

• Support net8.0 and beyond for future projects
• Support net4.8 for .net framework on windows (see issue Support for dotnet framework4.8 #517 for the rationale here)
• Support net6.0 for older .net applications of the .netstandard 2.x era

Would net6.0 be sufficient for your use case?

(Also note that Insight v6 still supports .netstandard 2.0 and there haven't been major changes since that version.)

[adarmus]

Hi,

I think ".netstandard2.0 is dead" isn't quite right (yet). The Microsoft page says:

My expectation is that widely used libraries will end up multi-targeting for both .NET Standard 2.0 and .NET 5

and

To summarize: Use netstandard2.0 to share code between .NET Framework and all other platforms.

We have a large estate, with both on-prem and cloud hosted solutions and on-prem has to stay on .Net Fx 4.8. This means we have a lot of code sharing between the .Net Fx and .Net 'Core' worlds, and producing libraries in Standard met our needs well.

For compliance reasons we 'must' move off .Net 6 onto .Net 8 to sit on a supported platform, so the question is: how do we share libraries between .Net Fx and .Net 8? I suspect the answer is going to involve multi-targeting, so we can build some solutions that are .Net 8 'all the way down' and some that are .Net Fx 'all the way down' (perhaps with some of the simpler libraries targeting Standard), but that's not your problem to solve (it's mine!).

It does mean that in the short term we are unable to run on .Net 8, but this is due to a combination of factors, primarily that the MS SqlClient package had a bug (dotnet/SqlClient#1930); this triggered the need to upgrade packages, including Insight.

I know that providing widely used libraries has to take into account many usage scenarios and there is an overhead to maintaining support for all the older platforms, so I understand your rationale for how you plan to move Insight forward. I also appreciate your time and thoughtful response.

Regards, Adam

[jonwagner]

I added back .netstandard2.0 in v8.0.2. I didn't add the test cases back, but there aren't any code differences between .netstandard and the more recent SDKs.

I think you'll find that your project will need to multi-target net48 and net80. That seems to be what most libraries are doing.

But for now this should be one less tangle in your knot. LMK if you find any issues with the build.

[adarmus]

That's great - thank you very much.

Adam