On May 30th, 2018 ASP.NET Core version 2.1 was released. For those of us using ASP.NET Core regularly, we had been anticipating this release for a while as there are a number of great new features. This blog post, however, is not focused on what is new, but what this means for developers. As my title suggests, upgrading isn't optional!
Upgrade Required? Why?
If you blinked or possibly didn't turn over the right stone you might miss it. It is the dreaded ".NET Support Policy" that dictates a need for an upgrade. In the past with .NET Core 1.0 and 1.1, both have a current support commitment from Microsoft that ends on June 27th, 2019. Many developers simply assumed that the same 3-year policy would be implemented for .NET Core 2.0 and 2.1.
Sadly, that assumption is incorrect. Looking at the Official Microsoft .NET Support Policy we can see that the support for .NET Core 2.0 ends October 1st, 2018. This is huge and VERY important for us to understand. Historically these upgrades have not been required, at least for a period of time. However, in this case, we have only from May 30th until September 30th to upgrade if we want to stay on a supported platform.
What It Takes To Upgrade
As with all of the other upgrades in .NET Core the help documentation contains a great Upgrading from 2.0 to 2.1 document. In my experience following this document results in a fairly seamless upgrade. However, I have had two projects that ran into a really weird NuGet package issue that caused me to lose around a day worth of effort when upgrading. I'll be posting a separate blog about this in the coming days.
Lesson Learned
While I understand the stance that has been taken by Microsoft. It is important for all of us that are on the cutting edge of technology to understand that outside influences can not only impact us when it comes to the cost to upgrade, but it can dictate the schedule to upgrade.