Upgrade .NET Framework 4.8 application to .NET 5.0

Before we start let's discuss why we need to upgrade .net framework 4.8 to .net 5.0.

.NET Framework is a software programming framework. It supporting languages like C#, F#, VB.NET, etc. Since then there have been multiple releases available and also many are successful. The last version 4.8 is the last feature version. I don't think so there will not be any feature upgrades of .NET Framework are releases . The reason for not any further new update in .NET Framework because of invention and success in .NET Core.

Table of Content

.NET 5.0 is an open-source and cross platform of .NET framework. .NET framework is only supported in Windows OS, whereas .NET 5.0 is supported in every possible platform. .NET core tops the most admired place in Framework, Libraries, and tools category.

Drawback of .NET framework

1. Limited innovation
2. Talent pool
3. The cost of legacy system
4. Security risk

Advantages of .NET 5

1. Efficient performance
2. Clouds and devops
3. Modern architect
4. Security advantage

Goal of .NET 5

1. The goals of .NET 5 is to provide a .NET SDK experience with BCL across all .NET 5 applications, support native and web applications across multiple operating systems.
2. Cross-platform implementation with any device
3. Supports mostly all key platform features for .Net core, Xamarin, .Net Framework
4. Open Source & Community-Oriented
5. Fast, Scalable, and high performance
6. Support with latest updates to Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio 2019 and Visual Studio for Mac
7. Side-by-side installation
8. Smarter Deployment & Packages
9. Small Project Files

Why should we migrate to .NET 5?

There is a reason for having updates and new releases in many technologies, business is quite dynamic in terms of competition and innovation.

1. There is no support anymore for old versions of .NET Framework
2. The maintenance of the project built in old versions of .NET Framework is costing more, once it is consuming more server resources
3. .NET Core and .NET 5 contain tons of improvements in terms of performance and security
4. Better security is always a good point in new technologies
5. Over time, it is much harder to find professionals who are willing to work with old technologies. It includes getting difficulties in the hiring process by the companies because everyone likes to be up to date with new technology.
6. Stability is a good point here once newer versions always contain relevant updates and fix the legacy features.

Migrate Application

Code analysis

Learn how compatible your code and solution is with .NET framework 4.8 to analyze if your code is compatible with .NET 5 need to check it with .NET analyzer tool.

Microsoft has developed a Portability Analyzer tool that focuses on analyzing your code and giving you a in-depth report regarding the compatibility between your current framework and the selected target frameworks.

Migration types

How to migrate is based on how your software is developed and released. If your application is still not distributed, you have a great opportunity of migrating in a single go.

Migration of the .csprojs files

Convert your project files to the Microsoft.NET.Sdk format. Add target version of your new targeted framework.

Your solution Files compiled and generated during the first build will be automatically added to the @(Compile) list because of the SDK-type csproj.

Your solution Files generated at compile-time by the Nth-build will be added to the @(Compile) list by the code in your .csproj where you explicitly include them.

Code migration

Convert your .NET framework or c# code into .NET 5. To finalize, there’s a package available in nuggets package to install in your project which tells you while coding if a given method exists for all target frameworks that your project has selected.

However, your software moving forward with ongoing development and releases, the one-go migration isn’t advisable.

1. First of all open your solution file in visual studio and after that convert all your packages.config dependencies to the PackageReference format with the conversion tool in Visual Studio. This step involves converting your dependencies from the current version to the target version packages.config format. packages.config doesn't work on .NET 5, so this conversion is required if you have package dependencies otherwise you can skip this step.

2. Convert your project file to the new SDK-format files structure. If you wish to create new projects for .NET 5 otherwise attempt to convert your existing project file with a tool. .NET 5 uses a different project file format than .NET Framework. You will need to convert your project files into this format to continue.

3. Re-target all projects you wish to port to target .NET Framework 4.8 or higher.This step describes that you can use API for .NET Framework targets when .NET 5 doesn't support a particular API.

4. Update all dependencies to the latest version. Your solution may be using older versions of libraries that may not have .NET Standard support. However, later versions may support it. This may require code changes if there are changes in libraries.

5. Use the .NET Portability Analyzer to analyze your assemblies and see if they're portable to .NET 5.The .NET Portability Analyzer tool analyzes your compiled assemblies and generates a report. This report shows a high-level portability summary of each and every API that you're using that is not available on .NET 5.

6. Install the .NET API analyzer into your projects to identify APIs and some other potential compatibility issues. This tool is similar to the portability analyzer, but instead of analyzing if code can build on .NET 5, it analyzes whether you're using an API in a way that will throw an Exception at run time.

7. At this point, you can switch to targeting .NET 5 generally for applications or .NET Standard for libraries.]

8. Switch it to the desired framework. For .NET 5.0, this would be look like:

Above all steps are helpful in upgrading .NET framework 4.8 to .NET 5.0.

Conclusion

.NET 5.0 is a big release that can improve many aspects of users with .net. Net 5 has a broad set of improvements, toJson serialization usability to Arm64 enablement, ranging from single file applications, to performance.If you’re interested in performance, you may be interested in our progress with the TechEmpower benchmarks.