Tag: mac

Until NetCore 2 came along, migrating an existing Net Framework project to dotnet core was likely a painful exercise in futility, as you time-consumingly discovered just how many bits of the .Net framework don't exist on netcore 1. Small things, like key parts of AdoNet. It was a bleeding edge experience.

But then there was dotnet core 2 with not-very-far-off 100% Api compatibility. And now all is sweetness and light.

Seriously. It is. Huge chunks of your .Net framework project will now 'just work' on .netcore, with little or no editing. In fact it's so easy, you might consider multi-targeting net framework and netcore just to show off.

Console apps and class libraries are straightforward. Considerations for UI and platform technologies:

• For AspNet, there is a learning curve from Mvc versions 3/4/5 to AspNetCore for which I will refer you to the tutorials. There is then work to do which I do cover below.
• For Windows Forms and WPF projects, I recommend you to the considerations in MS guide for porting Winforms.
• WWF and WCF-serverside are not (currently) migratible, although WCF-clientside is. Moving Web-facing WCF-serverside to dotnetcore with NancyFx or to AspNetCore would be a smallish-rewrite, about the same as moving to WebApi2; but it seems that MS are working on WCF serverside. Remoting, however is gone. So if your preference for WCF is that it's a better style that all this pseudo-resty AspNet nonsense, then consider Nancy.

Overview

1. Start with a new, empty dotnet core 2 project
2. Drag-n-drop all your existing code into it, excluding AssemblyInfo.cs
3. Deal with .settings and .config files
4. Re-add your NuGet dependencies
5. Deal with other code differences
6. Build and Go!

Well okay, that last step, Build-and-Go, is more likely to be Build-and-Fix-The-Next-Compiler-Error-And-Build-Again. But it is mostly straightforward.

To migrate AspNet to AspNetCore there are more steps, and you do have to start with the learning curve for a whole new framework. That said, it's like someone thought, “let's redo Mvc as WebApi2 + Razor + Views but with a cleaner startup style and with mandatory dependency injection”. Your controllers will hardly change. I do find AspNetCore simpler, cleaner, easier to work with. Roughly, your steps are:

1. Work through the getting started tutorials & learning curve. (Estimate 5-10 hours per person?)
2. Migrate your startup config to the new approach (2-10 hours depending on how much novel startup code you have)
3. Migrate any custom authentication to the new approach (An hour or so if you read the gotcha below)
4. Consider whether your Attribute-based filters will remain as attributes or be re-worked into something else.
5. Re-tool unit tests which mocked the old Asp.Net Mvc dependencies

Larger sets of projects

If you are dealing with not just a single project but a whole load of them, you should first look through Microsoft's guide to porting. The main reason to not work through those steps for a single project is that since netcore2, the fastest way to analyse “what problems will I have in porting” for a smallish project is to just do it! You can most likely finish the job already, faster than you can use the analysis tools to predict what problems you will have. That wasn't always the case before netcore 2. A couple of thoughts from that guide that I do recommend though:

• Check your third-party dependencies first. If they aren't available on dotnetcore, that's presumably a showstopper?
• Check you're aren't relying on technology that isn't available in dotnetcore.

Start with a new empty dotnet core 2 project.

To migrate an executable you'd create a console app. For a class library, you can make it a netstandard2 project, which makes the project available for use in .net 4.6.1+ / 4.7 as well as in dotnet core.

The command line is very trendy in dotnet core, so you can do it all with dotnet new instead of using a GUI. dotnet new will show what templates are installed on your machine.

Drag-n-drop all your existing code in, excluding AssemblyInfo.cs

dotnet core projects assume, by default, that if there's a code file in the directory or a subdirectory then it's part of the project, so just dragging all your code into the new project directory will just work.

Don't include the AssemblyInfo.cs because that gets auto-generated from the .csproj file. If you have anything of interest in your AssemblyInfo.cs, edit the .csproj file and put it in there. The AssemblyInfo properties section of Additions to the csproj properties for dotnet core show you the Element Names to use if you want to re-add information. Something like:

<PropertyGroup>
<TargetFrameworks>netstandard1.6;net40</TargetFrameworks>
<AssemblyVersion>4.1.4.3</AssemblyVersion>
<AssemblyFileVersion>4.1.4.3</AssemblyFileVersion>
<PackageVersion>4.1.4.3</PackageVersion>
<GenerateDocumentationFile>true</GenerateDocumentationFile>
<Title>TestBase – Rich, fluent assertions and tools for testing with heavyweight dependencies: AspNetCore, AdoNet, HttpClient, AspNet.Mvc, Streams, Logging</Title>
<PackageDescription><![CDATA[*TestBase* gives you a flying start with ....etc...</PackageDescription>

Note the new properties with names beginning with <Package...> which will be picked up by dotnet pack when creating NuGet Packages. Nuget is much easier with dotnet core, it's kind of built-in instead of being an extra thing to learn and do.

Deal with .settings and .config files

There is a whole new approach to settings and configuration. You will have to learn it. It's good though. It lets you do things like this:

{
"AComponentDefaults": {
"SomeSetting": "Me",
"ANumericSetting" : 1.0,
"Subsetting": {
"Something" : "Sub"
},

"JustOneLine" : "This"
}

and then read a whole section as strongly-typed settings with a one-liner:

Configuration.GetSection("AComponentDefaults")
.Bind(myComponent = new AComponent());

You can still use single-line settings of course:

var justOneLine=Configuration["JustOneLine"]

The new system deals easily with per-environment overrides, and has a whole new “get your config from all kinds of other sources than the settings file” capability.

Re-add your NuGet dependencies

This is straightforward. In Visual Studio (or in JetBrains Rider) use right-click -> Manage NuGet Packages. On the command line it's dotnet add package.

The big news here is that most of your NuGet dependencies already work on dotnetcore. All of the most downloaded NuGet packages are either multi-targeted or have packages for each platform. (The dependency trees for most packages for dotnet core is quite different to the dependency tree for net framework, but it makes no difference at all, on the whole).

Deal with other code differences

I don't think there are too many. Under netcore2, your major external dependencies – AdoNet, HttpClient and FileSystem – are all either the same or quite similar. SqlClient, Npgsql, Dapper are pretty much unchanged and the rest of the Framework is very much the same.
Main code changes:

• Scan the list of breaking changes, which are largely in low-level or platform specific areas.
• If you use reflection you must often use type.GetTypeInfo().GetXXX() instead of type.GetXXX(). If you're good with regex, this just needs a search-&-replace to fix.
• EntityFramework Core is different, but not extremely different.

Build and Go!

And … deploy to Macos and Linux. Hurray.

Migrating AspNet to AspNetCore

Work through the getting started tutorials

Really. Don't try to skip the aspnetcore getting started learning curve. Be aware that the tutorials push the new Razor Pages approach, which you will want to ignore. Instead be sure you're clear on how the new approach handles startup, dependency injection, attributes, filters, and authentication. Your controllers and routing will largely work with minimal change.

Migrate your startup config to the new approach

So having done your learning curve, you understand that all your Global.asax.cs and App_Startup code will move into, or be called from, your Startup class. And you will cleanly separate config setup—having learned about the new configuration approach–and you will use a dependency injection container to provide any global config to your controllers.

Fix-up ControllerContext changes

There are some fiddling tidyup changes on ControllerContext and Request properties–for instance userHostAddress is no more, you must look for HttpContext.Connection.RemoteIpAddress instead. Global HttpContext is gone, but of course you were always careful to use controller.HttpContext weren't you?

Add the new interfaces to Attribute-based filters, or else rework them as middleware

You do need to learn about the new kinds of filters, and consider whether what you are doing with your filters should stay as-is in attribute filters or might it be simpler to move logic into the new middleware approach.

Migrate any custom authentication/authorization to the new approach

The mistake to avoid here, is trying to make your custom AuthorizationAttribute work as an AspNetCore attribute. Don't. Instead,

• Move the logic of your custom AuthorizationAttribute into a Policy, which could be just a single method call.
• Delete your custom attribute and let the built-in AuthorizeAttribute reference your new policy:

  [Authorize(Policy="MyCustomPolicy")]

It would have saved me half a day if I'd realised this up-front. But on this plan, you can migrate custom authenticate in an hour or even minutes.

Re-tool your unit test controller dependencies for the new framework

There is some popular code on the web for mocking the dependencies of an Mvc 3 or 4 or 5 Controller.ControllerContext. This must all be replaced.

Myself, for Mvc 4 & 5 I always used TestBase-Mvc which gave me two simple extension methods:

var unitUnderTest= new MyMvcController(...)
.WithHttpContextAndRoutes();

var webApiControllerUnderTest= new MyWebApiController(...)
.WithWebApiHttpContext<T>(HttpMethod httpMethod,
[Optional] string requestUri,
[Optional] string routeTemplate);

//Or, optional parameters to process the actual route urls from your RegisterRoutes config:

controllerUnderTest
.WithHttpContextAndRoutes(
[Optional] Action<RouteCollection> mvcApplicationRoutesRegistration,
[optional] string requestUrl,
[Optional] string query = "",
[Optional] string appVirtualPath = "/",
[Optional] HttpApplication applicationInstance)

This makes sure a controller can reference cookies, session, TempData, the Url.Action() calls and even the global HttpContext.Current in a unit test context.

For AspNetCore, I wrote TestBase.Mvc.AspNetCore (soon to be renamed to to TestBase.AspNetCore) which offers a similar thing:

var uut = new ControllerUnderTest().WithControllerContext();
uut.Url.Action("a", "b").ShouldEqual("/b/a");
uut.ControllerContext.ShouldNotBeNull();
uut.HttpContext.ShouldBe(uut.ControllerContext.HttpContext);
uut.Request.ShouldNotBeNull();
uut.ViewData.ShouldNotBeNull();
uut.TempData.ShouldNotBeNull();
uut.MyAction(param)
.ShouldBeViewResult()
.ShouldHaveModel<YouSaidViewModel>()
.YouSaid.ShouldBe(param);

It also has a large set of fluent assertions for ViewResults, FileResults, etc, etc. Once I'd written the new infrastructure, migrating my controller unit tests was mostly painless. (Nb it still needs a few changes for CompatibityVersion_2_2, it's currently written for 2.0.)

New in AspNetCore is the ease of testing not just individual controllers but the whole hosted application. The AspNetCore team coded a TestServer for their unit tests, and this server can be used, bootstrapped with your actual application's Startup code, and then tested with an HttpClient:

[TestFixture]
public class WhenTestingControllersUsingAspNetCoreTestTestServer : HostedMvcTestFixtureBase
{

[TestCase(""/dummy/action?id={id}"")]
public async Task Get_Should_ReturnActionResult(string url)
{
var id=Guid.NewGuid();
var httpClient=GivenClientForRunningServer<Startup>();
GivenRequestHeaders(httpClient, ""CustomHeader"", ""HeaderValue1"");

var result= await httpClient.GetAsync(url.Formatz(new {id}));

result
.ShouldBe_200Ok()
.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result
.ShouldBe(""Content"");
}

But I have come round to seeing this as automated integration testing, not unit testing. I would use it for testing e.g. content negotiation is working as expected, not for testing the domain logic of a controller action.

Conclusion

Since the arrival of netcore2, the cost of migrating to DotNetCore is dramatically lower. DotNetCore tooling and extensibility is very good. Even migrating AspNet is not an excessive task. Even for just NetFramework 4 development, the new tooling is simpler and better. I reckon that dotnetcore is cheaper and easier to write and maintain. Both C# and the framework are evolving in ways that reduce your cost of development: And you get cross-platform deployment pretty much for free. At last.

A 15-second guide and 15-minute walk through

You have a .Net Core project, whether a netstandard library, or a netcore app, and you'd like it to be available for consumption by a net40 or net45 application?

’s easy!

Step 1: Open the csproj file and replace the line:

<TargetFramework>netcoreapp2.0</TargetFramework>

with

<TargetFrameworks>netcoreapp2.0;net45</TargetFrameworks>

Save and build, and you're done!

Well, maybe. Seriously though, for a project with no dependencies this one step may be all you need to do. There is a massive and impressive compatibility between .Net framework 4.x and .Net Core.

For when that doesn't just work, this page goes through the complications and the further steps you may need. We will take a netcore csproj file as the start, and make it also build for a netframework target.

The simplest way to do the reverse—to make an older netframework project multi-target—is to first migrate it to a netcore project, either by manually migrating to netcore or by using the .NET upgrade assistant in Visual Studio. Honest. The new csproj file is a fraction of the complexity of the old-style projects, and it handles both NetFramework and NetCore very simply. A first-migrate-to-core approach is much simpler and faster than trying to make an old-style project file handle dotnetcore (if it were even possible).

These are the steps in outline:

1. Learn about conditional sections in your csproj file, so that you can declare different dependencies for each target. Create two conditional sections, one for netcore. and one for netframework.
2. Optionally, add a boilerplate section to your project to enable the netframework target to build on mono for linux or macos.
3. Discover what explicit references to framework dlls the netframework target requires, and add each one as a <Reference /> in the netframework conditional section.
4. Discover what NuGet dependencies for your project are different on netcore vs netframework. Put a <PackageReference /> for each target in the respective conditional section. It's possible that you have a dependency on something that isn't available for both your targets. If so, you're probably stuck, unless you can somehow code round the missing dependency.
5. Deal with code that doesn't compile on all targets. Most likely this will be :
   • language features such as async/await for which the C# compiler relies on access to .Net framework 4.5 and later. Polyfills are sometimes possible.
   • framework classes and methods not available in your target. Most notable might be HttpClient, which first appeared in net45, but also for instance HostingEnvironment.QueueBackgroundWorkItem() (net452 and later) and Type.GetTypeInfo() & PropertyInfo.GetCustomAttribute() in net45 and later. In fact HttpClient for Net40 on Windows is available on Nuget in the System.Net.Http package. Type.GetTypeInfo() is mostly easy to polyfill. Your mileage will vary.

You can go through these steps in a simplistic, “try to build;fix the next error; repeat” way.

1. Change TargetFramework to TargetFrameworks

Open your csproj file, either by right-clicking on it in Visual Studio, or in another Editor.
The first step is to replace the line:

<TargetFramework>netcoreapp2.0</TargetFramework>

with

<TargetFrameworks>netcoreapp2.0;net45</TargetFrameworks>

Notice that the plural TargetFrameworks has an s.

How, you ask, do I know what the valid target names are? This, and many other questions about multi-targetting are answered in https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tutorials/libraries.

2. Create conditional sections in your csproj file

Here's a csproj file for a typical small project:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
<PropertyGroup>
<TargetFramework>netcoreapp2.0</TargetFramework>
<IsPackable>false</IsPackable>
</PropertyGroup>
<ItemGroup>
<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk" Version="15.8.0" />
<PackageReference Include="xunit" Version="2.4.0" />
<PackageReference Include="xunit.runner.visualstudio" Version="2.4.0" />
</ItemGroup>
<ItemGroup>
<ProjectReference Include="..\PredicateDictionary\PredicateDictionary.csproj" />
<ProjectReference Include="..\TestBase\TestBase.csproj" />
</ItemGroup>
</Project>

Add new <ItemGroup> elements with Condition attributes:

<ItemGroup Condition="$(TargetFramework.StartsWith('netcore'))" >
</ItemGroup>
<ItemGroup Condition="$(TargetFramework.StartsWith('net4'))" >
</ItemGroup>

Later, if you add more references to a project after multi-targetting you will almost certainly have to manually re-edit the csproj file to get the new references into the right conditional block. The MSBuild file format is very editable, so long as you have a basic grasp of xml. You can add, combine and reorder ItemGroups and PropertyGroups as you wish, and add any amount of properties and conditions.

But now, try to build.

2½. (Optional) Support building the netframework target on mono for linux or macos

In my case working on a Mac, my next error is

error MSB3644: The reference assemblies for framework ".NETFramework,Version=v4.5" were not found. To resolve this, install the SDK or Targeting Pack … etc …

…which is resolved with a 'boilerplate' section provided by https://github.com/dsyme (Thanks Don!). Add this to your csproj file:

<PropertyGroup Condition="$(TargetFramework.StartsWith('net4')) and '$(OS)' == 'Unix'">
<!-- When compiling .NET SDK 2.0 projects targeting .NET 4.x on Mono using 'dotnet build' you -->
<!-- have to teach MSBuild where the Mono copy of the reference asssemblies is -->
<!-- Look in the standard install locations -->
<BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' == '' AND EXISTS('/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/Current/lib/mono')">/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/Current/lib/mono</BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono>
<BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' == '' AND EXISTS('/usr/lib/mono')">/usr/lib/mono</BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono>
<BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' == '' AND EXISTS('/usr/local/lib/mono')">/usr/local/lib/mono</BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono>
<!-- If we found Mono reference assemblies, then use them -->
<FrameworkPathOverride Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != '' AND '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net40'">$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)/4.0-api</FrameworkPathOverride>
<FrameworkPathOverride Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != '' AND '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net45'">$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)/4.5-api</FrameworkPathOverride>
<FrameworkPathOverride Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != '' AND '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net451'">$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)/4.5.1-api</FrameworkPathOverride>
<FrameworkPathOverride Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != '' AND '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net452'">$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)/4.5.2-api</FrameworkPathOverride>
<FrameworkPathOverride Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != '' AND '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net46'">$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)/4.6-api</FrameworkPathOverride>
<FrameworkPathOverride Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != '' AND '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net461'">$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)/4.6.1-api</FrameworkPathOverride>
<FrameworkPathOverride Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != '' AND '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net462'">$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)/4.6.2-api</FrameworkPathOverride>
<FrameworkPathOverride Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != '' AND '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net47'">$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)/4.7-api</FrameworkPathOverride>
<FrameworkPathOverride Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != '' AND '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net471'">$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)/4.7.1-api</FrameworkPathOverride>
<EnableFrameworkPathOverride Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != ''">true</EnableFrameworkPathOverride>
<!-- Add the Facades directory.  Not sure how else to do this. Necessary at least for .NET 4.5 -->
<AssemblySearchPaths Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != ''">$(FrameworkPathOverride)/Facades;$(AssemblySearchPaths)</AssemblySearchPaths>
</PropertyGroup>

And build again.

3. Discover what explicit references to framework dlls the netframework target requires

My next error is

error CS0012: The type 'Attribute' is defined in an assembly that is not referenced. You must add a reference to assembly 'System.Runtime, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a'.

The error tells me exactly what reference and version I need for my netframework section. Add it like this:

<ItemGroup Condition="$(TargetFramework.StartsWith('net4'))" >
<Reference Include="System.Runtime" Version="4.0.0.0" />
</ItemGroup>

For my next builds, I get similar errors for System.Threading.Tasks, and System.Collections, so I add them the same way.

<ItemGroup Condition="$(TargetFramework.StartsWith('net4'))" >
<Reference Include="System.Runtime" Version="4.0.0.0" />
<Reference Include="System.Threading.Tasks" Version="4.0.0.0" />
<Reference Include="System.Collections" Version="4.0.0.0" />
</ItemGroup>

At this point, if your NuGet dependencies are compatible with both your netcore and netframework targets you may be done! The big news here is that most of your NuGet dependencies are compatible with both. All of the most downloaded NuGet packages are either multi-targeted, or have packages for each target.

4. Discover what NuGet dependencies for your project are different on netcore vs netframework

If some of your NuGet dependencies don't work for both platforms, then put the dependencies in the conditional section for netcore. Then find the right package versions for netframework.

Nuget dependencies are represented as <PackageReference /> elements, so in my case I move these into the netcore section:

<ItemGroup Condition="$(TargetFramework.StartsWith('netcore'))" >
<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk" Version="15.8.0" />
<PackageReference Include="xunit" Version="2.4.0" />
<PackageReference Include="xunit.runner.visualstudio" Version="2.4.0" />
</ItemGroup>

Now I make Visual Studio (or Rider) help me sort out the NuGet dependencies for the netframework target, by temporarily single-targetting:

<TargetFramework>net45</TargetFramework>

I build, and my next error is:

error CS0246: The type or namespace name 'Xunit' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

which I can easily resolve in Visual Studio or JetBrains Rider via “Manage NuGet Packages” to add a NuGet reference to xunit. The IDE adds a single <PackageReference />, but puts it in an unconditional <ItemGroup> so I manually move it to the netframework conditional ItemGroup. Now my ItemGroups look like this:

<ItemGroup Condition="$(TargetFramework.StartsWith('netcore'))">
<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk" Version="15.8.0" />
<PackageReference Include="xunit.runner.visualstudio" Version="2.4.0" />
</ItemGroup>
<ItemGroup Condition="$(TargetFramework.StartsWith('net4'))">
<Reference Include="System.Runtime" Version="4.0.0.0" />
<Reference Include="System.Threading.Tasks" Version="4.0.0.0" />
<Reference Include="System.Collections" Version="4.0.0.0" />
<PackageReference Include="xunit" Version="2.4.1" /> <!--  <== I manually moved this line into this section-->
</ItemGroup>

I build again. If there are more NuGet references, I add them in the usually way. Once all NuGet dependencies are sorted, I change back to multi-target again

<TargetFrameworks>netcoreapp2.0;net45</TargetFrameworks>

And now it all builds and works! Furthermore you find with UnitTest projects that Visual Studio, JetBrains Rider and the dotnet cli all recognise and run the tests twice, once on each platform.

When coding, once you have a multi-target project, it may be confusing the first time you hit a compile error on one target whilst the other target is fine. But you will find that both Visual Studio and JetBrains Rider are somewhat multi-target aware, and looking again at the error output you can tell which target is erroring.

As of 2019 no IDE will automatically add differing NuGet dependencies for multi-targets, but they will happily handle projects that you have manually edited, and they will correctly process conditional sections.

The final csproj file looks like this. It builds both framework and netcore targets, and works on Windows, on macOs with mono 5, and on Linux with mono 5.

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
<PropertyGroup>
<TargetFrameworks>netcoreapp2.0;net45</TargetFrameworks>
<IsTestProject>true</IsTestProject>
<IsPackable>false</IsPackable>
</PropertyGroup>
<ItemGroup>
<ProjectReference Include="..\PredicateDictionary\PredicateDictionary.csproj" />
<ProjectReference Include="..\TestBase\TestBase.csproj" />
</ItemGroup>

<ItemGroup Condition="$(TargetFramework.StartsWith('netcore'))">
<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk" Version="15.8.0" />
<PackageReference Include="xunit.runner.visualstudio" Version="2.4.1" />
<PackageReference Include="xunit" Version="2.4.1" />
</ItemGroup>
<ItemGroup Condition="$(TargetFramework.StartsWith('net4'))">
<Reference Include="System.Runtime" Version="4.0.0.0" />
<Reference Include="System.Threading.Tasks" Version="4.0.0.0" />
<Reference Include="System.Collections" Version="4.0.0.0" />
<PackageReference Include="xunit" Version="2.4.1" />
</ItemGroup>

<PropertyGroup Condition="$(TargetFramework.StartsWith('net4')) and '$(OS)' == 'Unix'">
<!-- When compiling .NET SDK 2.0 projects targeting .NET 4.x on Mono using 'dotnet build' you -->
<!-- have to teach MSBuild where the Mono copy of the reference asssemblies is -->
<!-- Look in the standard install locations -->
<BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' == '' AND EXISTS('/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/Current/lib/mono')">/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/Current/lib/mono</BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono>
<BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' == '' AND EXISTS('/usr/lib/mono')">/usr/lib/mono</BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono>
<BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' == '' AND EXISTS('/usr/local/lib/mono')">/usr/local/lib/mono</BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono>
<!-- If we found Mono reference assemblies, then use them -->
<FrameworkPathOverride Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != '' AND '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net40'">$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)/4.0-api</FrameworkPathOverride>
<FrameworkPathOverride Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != '' AND '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net45'">$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)/4.5-api</FrameworkPathOverride>
<FrameworkPathOverride Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != '' AND '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net451'">$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)/4.5.1-api</FrameworkPathOverride>
<FrameworkPathOverride Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != '' AND '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net452'">$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)/4.5.2-api</FrameworkPathOverride>
<FrameworkPathOverride Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != '' AND '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net46'">$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)/4.6-api</FrameworkPathOverride>
<FrameworkPathOverride Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != '' AND '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net461'">$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)/4.6.1-api</FrameworkPathOverride>
<FrameworkPathOverride Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != '' AND '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net462'">$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)/4.6.2-api</FrameworkPathOverride>
<FrameworkPathOverride Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != '' AND '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net47'">$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)/4.7-api</FrameworkPathOverride>
<FrameworkPathOverride Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != '' AND '$(TargetFramework)' == 'net471'">$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)/4.7.1-api</FrameworkPathOverride>
<EnableFrameworkPathOverride Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != ''">true</EnableFrameworkPathOverride>
<!-- Add the Facades directory.  Not sure how else to do this. Necessary at least for .NET 4.5 -->
<AssemblySearchPaths Condition="'$(BaseFrameworkPathOverrideForMono)' != ''">$(FrameworkPathOverride)/Facades;$(AssemblySearchPaths)</AssemblySearchPaths>
</PropertyGroup>
</Project>

5. Deal with code that doesn't compile on all targets

This part is the most work and may involve trade-offs. See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tutorials/libraries#how-to-multitarget for the constants to use to conditionally compile code.

Fortunately people have been doing this for decades, and there are plenty of C# examples on NuGet, so I add only a couple of brief notes for beginners.

Polyfills for Type.GetTypeInfo() & PropertyInfo.GetCustomAttribute()

In dotnet core, System.Type.GetTypeInfo() provides methods which, under Framework 4, you would call directly off the System.Type itself. In fact GetTypeInfo() exists in Net45 onwards, so I've only used this for targetting net40:

//Conditional compile
#if NET40
/// <summary>
/// Extension methods to ease net40«--»netstandard code sharing.
/// Backfill netstandard/net45 methods not found in Net40
/// </summary>
public static class MultiTargetShims
{
/// <summary>Shim for <c>GetTypeInfo()</c>, returns the <see cref="Type"/> instead</summary>
/// <param name="type"></param>
/// <returns><paramref name="type"/></returns>
public static Type GetTypeInfo(this Type type) => type;

/// <summary>Shim for <c>GetCustomAttributes&lt;T%gt;</c>
/// using <see cref="MemberInfo.GetCustomAttributes(Type,bool)"/> </summary>
/// <typeparam name="T"></typeparam>
/// <param name="this"></param>
/// <returns>
/// <c><![CDATA[@this.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(T),true).Cast<T>().FirstOrDefault()]]></c>
/// </returns>
public static T GetCustomAttribute<T>(this PropertyInfo @this) where T : Attribute
{
return @this.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(T),true).Cast<T>().FirstOrDefault();
}
}
#endif

A Polyfill for DBNull

This polyfill using runtime type checking rather than conditional compilation. It's only needed if NetStandard 1.3 or earlier is one of your targets, all other targets define System.DBNull.Value.

/// <summary>
/// Polyfill because NetStandard 1.3 has no System.DBNull
/// even though NetFx has it since v1.1
/// </summary>
class DBNull
{
/// <summary>
/// Polyfill for <c>System.DBNull.Value</c>, because
/// NetStandard 1.3 is missing System.DBNull,
/// even though NetFx has it since v1.1
/// </summary>
public static readonly object Value
= Type.GetType("System.DBNull")
?.GetField("Value",
BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Static)
?.GetValue(null);
}

Polyfill for FastExpressionCompiler

I use the NuGet package FastExpressionCompiler, which requires Net45 or NetStandard1.3. For Net40, I replace it with just the framework Expression.Compile(). Each file that references CompileFast() has a conditional using statement:

#if NETSTANDARD1_3 || NET45
using FastExpressionCompiler;
#endif

And I add an extension method with the negated conditional expression:

#if !NETSTANDARD1_3 && !NET45
public static class MultiTargetShims
{
/// <summary>Replace FastCompiler with <see cref="Expression{TDelegate}.Compile()"/></summary>
/// <param name="expression"></param>
/// <typeparam name="T"></typeparam>
/// <returns>T</returns>
public static T CompileFast<T>(this Expression<T> expression) => expression.Compile();
}
#endif

There's a limit of course. Sometimes you just have to draw a line, and say the cost of supporting certain targets is too high.

Using async/await on Net40

I've never done this. Instead, I've been satisfied to target net45. But the BCL Team say it can be done with the async targeting pack, if you look on that page for the Issue 'When targeting .NET 4'.

Publishing to NuGet

If you dotnet pack a multi-targeting project, you see it builds all targets, and puts them all in a single nuget package. What could be easier?

dotnet pack TestBase

Restore completed in 38.18 ms for /Users/chris/Source/Repos/TestBase/TestBase/TestBase.csproj.
TestBase ->
/Users/chris/Repos/TestBase/bin/Debug/net40/TestBase.dll
TestBase ->
/Users/chris/Repos/TestBase/bin/Debug/netstandard1.6/TestBase.dll
Successfully created package
'/Users/chris/Repos/TestBase/bin/Debug/TestBase.4.1.4.3.nupkg'.
Successfully created package
'/Users/chris/Repos/TestBase/bin/Debug/TestBase.4.1.4.3.symbols.nupkg'.

The nupkg includes all information about the dependencies for each target. Upload your nupkg to NuGet and voila! NuGet shows the world what platforms you have published and lists dependencies for each platform at the bottom of your NuGet page, in that familiar NuGet way:

Dependencies

.NETFramework 4.0

• ExpressionToCodeLib (>= 2.7.0)
• Newtonsoft.Json (>= 7.0.1)

NETStandard 1.6

• ExpressionToCodeLib (>= 2.7.0)
• FastExpressionCompiler (>= 1.7.1)
• NETStandard.Library (>= 1.6.1)
• Newtonsoft.Json (>= 9.0.1)
• System.ComponentModel.Annotations (>= 4.4.1)

( Bonus tip: if you also add NuGet metadata in your csproj file then the title, description, version, release notes etc will all show correctly too. )

What versions should I aim for?

You should read the table on The Net Standard Page to understand what NetStandard means, and what compatibility there is between versions of netframework and netcore.

I learnt some of the pain points of multi-targetting when making https://github.com/chrisfcarroll/TestBase multi-target. After first trying for “everything on net40 and netstandard 1.3 or 1.6” I quickly found that wasn't achievable. For instance, AdoNet on netcore is only really viable from netstandard2 onwards. HttpClient was only easy on netstandard 1.6 and net45. I concluded it made sense to target different things in each component, according to what dependencies they have.

I heartily commend these opinions as a basis for deciding what to target:

1. It's really much cheaper–in fact, barely any work at all–for someone to rebuild their net40 project on net45 than it is for you to dual-code for net40 plus a later target.

2. netstandard 1.x and netcore 1.x were, frankly, beta products for people on the bleeding edge. Again, it is really much cheaper for someone to move a netcore 1.x / netstandard 1.x projects to netcore 2 than it is for you to code to the deficiencies of netcore 1.x. Most people on netcore 1.x were doubtless glad to upgrade to net core 2 & netstandard 2 as soon as it came out. Netcore 2/netstandard 2 is the point at which multi-targetting becames easy, because API parity is very close to 100%.

3. You don't need to multi-target at all if you can just deploy netstandard2. It's true that the .Net Standard Page suggests there have been some issues with netstandard2 on frameworks earlier than net472. I'm not aware they have been widespread or even real issues. The 'issues' I know of are this –https://github.com/dotnet/standard/issues/545–kind of thing which, if we're brutal, boil down to “the output is a bit messy and it offends my sense of tidyness.”

   TL;DR

   • netstandard2 alone as a single target is the cheapest and simplest option.
   • net45 and netstandard2/netcore2 is the sane and happy medium when you want multi-target.
   • If your code also just builds and works on net40 or netcore1.x then great, target them. If not, don't waste your life on it.