4 ms·

I love the new dotnet ecosystem and use it professionally but am I the only one who thinks two years isn’t long enough for a “long term support” release? Obvio

I love the new dotnet ecosystem and use it professionally but am I the only one who thinks two years isn’t long enough for a “long term support” release? Obviously you’ll be able to run older versions of the framework so long as the underlying OS supports it but depending what type of environment you’re in this means you’re likely going to have to update perfectly working applications every two years. Do I think that it will take a massive amount of work to update from dotnet 6 to 8, or 8 to 10 in a few years? Probably not, but that could change at any time depending on the whims of Microsoft on that particular day. I get that the current technical zeitgeist is that if you’re not releasing a new version every other day you’re falling behind but five years seems a bit more reasonable to me.

rvdginste 4y ago
> but am I the only one who thinks two years isn’t long enough for a “long term support” release? No, I feel the same. It really is a completely different mindset compared to .net framework. And I believe it is recommended to keep upgrading, even in maintenance mode. I noticed that Microsoft removes target frameworks from their nuget packages as soon as they are no longer supported. That could be problematic if you need a security update and are on a no longer supported target framework. An “enterprise” environment that is used to Microsoft products is not used to that.
danroth27 4y ago
You actually get three years of support from .NET for Long Term Support (LTS) release. You can find the full support policy here: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/platform/support/policy https://dotnet.microsoft.com/platform/support/policy
evntdrvn 4y ago
The upgrade process from 5 to 6 to 7 has been a total breeze, and I’expect things to continue in that matter. There was a massive amount of churn between the introduction of .NET Core and Core 3, then 3 to 5 was quite a bit less so, and since then it’s been a non-issue. Pretty much just flip a version flag and get new features.
- simooooo 4y ago
  Yep 6 to 7 was just changing a 6 to a 7 in a project file
- lp0_on_fire 4y ago
  > Pretty much just flip a version flag and get new features. Sure, but in many cases for an application that is "done" we're not looking for new features, per se - we're looking for security patches. Moving from one major version to the next incurs a whole bunch of testing and validation that otherwise might not be needed (depending on your environment and industry).
Jochim 4y ago
I view frequent upgrades in the same way as LetsEncrypt's short certificate expiry. It encourages you to create a system that you trust to be upgradeable, rather than a beast that sits, untouched for fear it rears it's head in some ugly manner. Frankly, places that put off updates have always been a bit of a mess from personal experience and I'd rather have smaller more frequent updates that take a day or two every few years than massive irregular ones that aren't feasible to apply.
osigurdson 4y ago
>> 6 to 8 If you are using BinaryFormatter you certainly will have some work ahead of you.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  It's been suggested to avoid BinaryFormatter since well before WCF was built and WCF itself has since been deprecated after a decade or so of service.
  - osigurdson 4y ago
    It may be a self inflicted wound but a wound nonetheless.

rvdginste 4y ago

> but am I the only one who thinks two years isn’t long enough for a “long term support” release? No, I feel the same. It really is a completely different mindset compared to .net framework. And I believe it is recommended to keep upgrading, even in maintenance mode. I noticed that Microsoft removes target frameworks from their nuget packages as soon as they are no longer supported. That could be problematic if you need a security update and are on a no longer supported target framework. An “enterprise” environment that is used to Microsoft products is not used to that.

danroth27 4y ago

You actually get three years of support from .NET for Long Term Support (LTS) release. You can find the full support policy here: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/platform/support/policy https://dotnet.microsoft.com/platform/support/policy

evntdrvn 4y ago

The upgrade process from 5 to 6 to 7 has been a total breeze, and I’expect things to continue in that matter. There was a massive amount of churn between the introduction of .NET Core and Core 3, then 3 to 5 was quite a bit less so, and since then it’s been a non-issue. Pretty much just flip a version flag and get new features.

simooooo 4y ago
Yep 6 to 7 was just changing a 6 to a 7 in a project file
lp0_on_fire 4y ago
> Pretty much just flip a version flag and get new features. Sure, but in many cases for an application that is "done" we're not looking for new features, per se - we're looking for security patches. Moving from one major version to the next incurs a whole bunch of testing and validation that otherwise might not be needed (depending on your environment and industry).

Jochim 4y ago

I view frequent upgrades in the same way as LetsEncrypt's short certificate expiry. It encourages you to create a system that you trust to be upgradeable, rather than a beast that sits, untouched for fear it rears it's head in some ugly manner. Frankly, places that put off updates have always been a bit of a mess from personal experience and I'd rather have smaller more frequent updates that take a day or two every few years than massive irregular ones that aren't feasible to apply.

osigurdson 4y ago

>> 6 to 8 If you are using BinaryFormatter you certainly will have some work ahead of you.

WorldMaker 4y ago
It's been suggested to avoid BinaryFormatter since well before WCF was built and WCF itself has since been deprecated after a decade or so of service.
- osigurdson 4y ago
  It may be a self inflicted wound but a wound nonetheless.