Autofac 4.0 and ASP.NET Core / .NET Core Tasks

[alexmg]

This issue contains a list of (potential) tasks that need to be performed for Autofac 4.0 and adding support ASP.NET vNext.

• Create a develop branch following Gitflow.
• Make sure MyGet can build from the develop branch.
• Update the Autofac project to Profile259 to make the PCL compatible with aspnetcore50 framework target.
• Add .kproj files for Autofac and Autofac.AspNet.
• Add sample application for ASP.NET vNext.
• Remove NuGet dependencies on Autofac package while changes being made.
• Split out non-core projects to separate repositories.
• Use MSBuild target with .nuspec in each project to create NuGet packages. Package build is now done as part of AppVeyor build.
• Fix the assembly, file and package version numbers. Versioning is now controlled through appveyor.yml file.
• Tag the master branch with 3.5 prior to merging 4.0 into master (part of Gitflow anyway, but tags are required for doc site versions).
• Tag the master branch with 4.0 after bringing the develop code in (also part of Gitflow, also required for doc site).
• Update Autofac.Extensions.DependencyInjection to be strong named when the strong named version of Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection is released.
• Update to netstandard from dotnet TFM when released.
• Add support for IGetRequiredServiceAware in Autofac.Extensions.DepedencyInjection
• Add release notes to project.json/nuspec files to point to the wiki release note pages for each package. (Moved to Release notes on nuget.org #590)
• Update the package icon URL in project.json/nuspec to point to the GitHub URL for the icon rather than Google Code.
• Create a new version of the documentation site for 4.0.
• Finalize the 4.0 behavior based on changes that are being looked at for ASP.NET Core integration.
• Generate an updated version of the API documentation for 4.0.
• Update the autofac.org web site for 4.0. (Moved to Update autofac.org for 4.0 #823)
• Finish porting the list of integration libraries
• Update the Examples repository to the latest integrations.
• Create an upgrade guide for 3.x to 4.0 for core Autofac and integration libraries. (Moved to Create an upgrade guide for 3.x to 4.0 for core Autofac and integration libraries Documentation#29)

[tillig]

There may be some challenge creating the new doc site version prior to splitting out repositories. The way Read the Docs Versioning works is it's looking for tags on the codeline.

While it seems to see the develop branch, I am unable to enable it as visible through the administrative interface. I set it as active, the setting gets ignored with no error message or info. I'm guessing it has to do with no tags being in place.

I'll add some tagging tasks to the list to see if that remedies the issue.

[tillig]

Separate repos created for non-core projects. Changes we should announce when things are closer to working:

• Deprecated: Autofac.Extras.NHibernate
• Deprecated: Autofac.Extras.EnterpriseLibraryConfigurator
• Deprecated: Autofac.Integration.DomainServices
• Renamed: Autofac.Extras.Attributed => Autofac.Extras.AttributeMetadata
• Renamed: Autofac.Extras.Multitenant => Autofac.Multitenant
• Renamed: Autofac.Extras.Multitenant.Wcf => Autofac.Multitenant.Wcf
• Renamed: Autofac.Extras.DynamicProxy2 => Autofac.Extras.DynamicProxy

[tillig]

EF 7 was provided by Damian Edwards as a well-set-up repo that has some ASP.NET 5 code in it. I'm going to have to look in there to see how the automated build works. So far it doesn't appear straightforward, with the compiler and build system being dynamically downloaded via NuGet to bootstrap the process.

[clairernovotny]

One update here. You can read more on my blog, but the target here shouldn't be dnx451 or dnxcore*

Instead for Autofac, it should use dotnet. That is what CoreCLR things should target and will then support anything its contracts do. DNX isn't the only thing that can use it in other words.

I suspect that the Autofac main core package does not actually need any DNX-specific types/libraries, it needs CoreCLR. Then the other package (the former autofac.dnx one) does reference dnx-specifics and should target dnx*. Point being that the main autofac shouldn't as it'd work on more platforms than that.

[alexmg]

Thanks for the comment @onovotny and great blog post. I've created issue #668 to investigate switching to the dotnet target framework.

[tillig]

Version 4.0.0-beta7-130 now targets dotnet.

[tillig]

Started update of the Autofac.Multitenant repo including the rename of Autofac.Extras.Multitenant to Autofac.Multitenant. Next release of that package (4.0.0-beta8-*) will include that update.

[tillig]

For tracking integration library updates to Autofac 4...

• Autofac.Configuration
• Autofac.Extras.AggregateService
• Autofac.Extras.AttributeMetadata - renamed from Autofac.Extras.Attributed
• Autofac.Extras.CommonServiceLocator
• Autofac.Extras.DomainServices
• Autofac.Extras.DynamicProxy
• Autofac.Extras.EnterpriseLibraryConfigurator
• Autofac.Extras.FakeItEasy
• Autofac.Extras.Moq
• Autofac.Extras.MvvmCross
• Autofac.Extras.NHibernate
• Autofac.Mef
• Autofac.Multitenant - renamed from Autofac.Extras.Multitenant
• Autofac.Multitenant.Wcf - renamed from Autofac.Extras.Multitenant.Wcf
• Autofac.Mvc
• Autofac.Mvc.Owin
• Autofac.Owin
• Autofac.SignalR (Autofac.SignalR2)
• Autofac.Wcf
• Autofac.Web
• Autofac.WebApi (Autofac.WebApi2)
• Autofac.WebApi.Owin (Autofac.WebApi2.Owin)

(Wow, there are a lot of these...)

Items marked "in beta" are things that need to be moved along with Autofac core due to the change in build from .csproj to DNX, due to a dependency being in beta, or some other reason. Items checked off are done and published to NuGet, set to be compatible with Autofac < 5.0.0.

Versions are updated to 4.0 since they require Autofac 4.0 and drop .NET 4.0 support.

I may go back and see if I can get the updated code working against the latest stable pre-4.0 Autofac for easier upgrade support, but dropping .NET 4.0 still means we should rev the major semver, I think.

[tillig]

Two links I've found helpful in working through this:

• DNX Roadmap - shows when the beta releases are targeted to ship. Looks like beta 8 is supposed to be feature-complete, so hopefully the churn slows down.
• Demystifying PCL’s, .NET Core, DNX and UWP - blog from @onovotny with a table showing the compatibility of different framework targets. I've referred to this several times.