Notes about my own experience migrating from RC1 to RC2

[Bartmax]

@davidfowl asked me for notes so here they are. You may want to scroll down to the pain points section below :)

Migration RC1 to RC2

Easy/expected changes:

Tools

install RC2 tooling.
The lastest tools can be found here: https://github.com/dotnet/cli
We first started with https://dotnet.github.io/getting-started/ but it's outdated.

global.json

Update version of global.json to match RC2

"version": "1.0.0-rc1-update1" // BEFORE
"version": "1.0.0-rc2-20221" // AFTER

Nuget.config

add ci builds to nuget config

<add key="AspNetCiDev" value="https://www.myget.org/F/aspnetcidev/api/v3/index.json" />

project.json

Dependencies

Update all dependencies from Microsoft.AspNet.xxx to Microsoft.AspNetCore.xxx except Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.Client

Update all dependencies from x.EntityFramework.x to x.EntityFrameworkCore.x
Downgrade version to 1.0 on all dependencies renamed.

Some package rename were by hand because it wasn't a straight convention,
Microsoft.AspNetCore.Diagnostics.Entity
Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer

Some low-impact packages were removed:
Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.BrowserLink.Loader

External dependency Moq changed package name

"Moq": "", // BEFORE
"moq.netcore": "4.4.0-beta8", // AFTER

Frameworks

Update TFM. This change was a complete copy paste of some sample code. We had no idea what this change means.
before:

  "frameworks": {
    "dnx451": { },
    "dnxcore50": { }
  },

after:

  "frameworks": {
    "netcoreapp1.0": {
      "imports": [ "dnxcore50", "portable-net45+win8" ]
    }
  },

Code Changes

NOTE: BEFORE code may contain AspNetCore
because of the initial rename of all using directive.

Usings

Rename all using directives in *.cs, *.cshtml
Find all and replace: using Microsoft.AspNet. -> using Microsoft.AspNetCore.
About 122 occurrence(s).

Controllers

HttpNotFound // BEFORE 60 ocurrences
NotFound // AFTER 

HttpBadRequest() // BEFORE 5 ocurrences
BadRequest() // AFTER 

Entity Framework

GraphBehavior.X does not exist anymore on EF context methods.

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Identity.EntityFramework; // BEFORE 2 ocurrences
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Identity.EntityFrameworkCore; // AFTER

using Microsoft.Data.Entity; // BEFORE 40 ocurrences
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore; // AFTER

using Microsoft.Data.Entity.Metadata; // BEFORE 35 ocurrences
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Metadata; // AFTER

using Microsoft.Data.Entity.Migrations; // BEFORE 47 ocurrences
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Migrations; // AFTER

using Microsoft.Data.Entity.Infrastructure; // BEFORE 24 ocurrences
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Infrastructure; // AFTER

_context.Phones.Add(phone, GraphBehavior.IncludeDependents); // SAMPLE
_context.Phones.Add(phone); // SAMPLE AFTER

Extensions

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.FileProviders; // AFTER 3 ocurrences
using Microsoft.Extensions.FileProviders; // BEFORE

using Microsoft.Extensions.OptionsModel; // BEORE 1 ocurrences
using Microsoft.Extensions.Options; // AFTER

Identity

User.GetUserId() and User.IsSignedIn() doesn't exist. it was removed and added to UserManager and SignInManager.

ExternalLoginInfo.ExternalPrincipal was renamed to ExternalLoginInfo.Principal

User.GetUserId() // BEFORE 6 ocurrences
_userManager.GetUserId(User) // AFTER

User.IsSignedIn() // BEFORE 2 ocurrences
_signInManager.IsSignedIn(User) // AFTER

info.ExternalPrincipal // BEFORE
info.Principal // AFTER

Startup

services.AddEntityFramework()
                .AddSqlServer() // BEFORE

services.AddEntityFrameworkSqlServer()
                .AddEntityFrameworkSqlServer() // AFTER

services.AddCaching(); // NOT FOUND ??? REMOVED 
app.UseDatabaseErrorPage(); // NOT FOUND ??? REMOVED

app.UseRequestLocalization(
    new RequestCulture(
        new CultureInfo("en-us"))); // BEFORE
app.UseRequestLocalization(
    new RequestLocalizationOptions() { 
        DefaultRequestCulture = new RequestCulture(
            new CultureInfo("en-us")) }); // AFTER

app.UseIISPlatformHandler(options => options.AuthenticationDescriptions.Clear()); // NEED MORE INVESTIGATION. OPTIONS REMOVED.

This change is a complete copy/paste from sample. No idea what's going on here.

// Entry point for the application. BEFORE
        public static void Main(string[] args) => WebApplication.Run<Startup>(args);

// Entry point for the application. AFTER
        public static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var host = new WebHostBuilder()
                        .UseKestrel()
                        .UseContentRoot(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory())
                        .UseDefaultHostingConfiguration(args)
                        .UseIIS()
                        .UseStartup<Startup>()
                        .Build();

            host.Run();
        }

---

## Pain points: ### DotNet Restore

This was executed multiple times, at different point of migration.
Mostly all the output was kinda useless. Too much information, to many unknowns.
We tried to switch to -v warning with no luck.
It took some time to get to -v Minimal to get a usefull output from dotnet restore.

App Settings

We found a runtime Error with regarding appsettings. The error was clear, the options available not.
The fix was to change Verbose to Information

"Logging": {
    "IncludeScopes": false,
    "LogLevel": {
      "Default": "Information", // BEFORE: "Verbose"
      "System": "Information",
      "Microsoft": "Information"
    }
  }

We used POCO Configuration with code like:

services.Configure<StorageSettings>(Configuration.GetSection("StorageSettings"));

we dig into lots of documents, code, issues.
We hope this would be on Announcements repo but we couldn't find it.
we ended up with a hack

services.Configure<StorageSettings>(x => x.ConnectionString = Configuration["StorageSettings:ConnectionString"]);

Code

Some inner workings of razor,views,engines,etc changes weren't mentioned anywhere.
We have a simple taghelper that render partial views, this was impossible to figure out how to update it.
NTaylorMullen helped there.

Compile success!

Great, right... right?

Environment

Visual Studio environment variable wasn't respected. We first thought that ConfigureDevelopment were removed.
The problem here was that dotnet run shows the enviroment but an error was throw before.
Also this environment variable was changed twice for RC2. The announcement issue shows the old one with a note at the bottom that was changed again.
We wasted lot of time dealing with environment. mostly because of not understading the problem straight.

cshtml

@Inject namespaces had to be renamed,
taghelpers, etc.
because this was after hitting a specific page it was more painful than the cs code.
we also lost intellisense so... we had to rely on error messages.

tooling

We literally copy pasted every tooling sample until we got this:

  "tools": {
    "dotnet-publish-iis": "1.0.0-*",
    "dotnet-ef": "1.0.0-*",
    "dotnet-watch": "1.0.0-*",
    "dotnet-razor-tooling": "1.0.0-*"
  },

We still have no idea how those exactly works.
The only one that was really needed was EF because migrations (see next point).
We tried for several hours to get dotnet-watch to run without success.

EF Changes

I hit this issue: Invalid object name 'TableName'
before an announcement were created here:
EF Core: Table names now taken from DbSet names (starting in RC2).

While it was a simple ask repo and got a solution very quickly, it was like a neverending error trip.
At this point we were tired.

... And runs! ..., almost

we hit the web application but we seen no static files served!
DAMN!
We looked everywhere until we figure out that no gulp build was executed! even we had that on prepublish.
and well.. then

it worked.

[Bartmax]

just remember one undocumented note:
i deleted .dnx folder at some point and app stopped working.
it was fixed with dnvm install/upgrade

not sure exactly what was the problem... and don't remember clearly.

[Bartmax]

one more undocumented note:

IFormFile.SaveAsync was removed because it was impossible to test. aspnet/HttpAbstractions#610

We added what we found on old source code:

public static class FormFileExtensions
    {
        private static int DefaultBufferSize = 80 * 1024;
        /// <summary>
        /// Asynchronously saves the contents of an uploaded file.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="formFile">The <see cref="IFormFile"/>.</param>
        /// <param name="filename">The name of the file to create.</param>
        public async static Task SaveAsAsync(
            this IFormFile formFile,
            string filename,
            CancellationToken cancellationToken = default(CancellationToken))
        {
            if (formFile == null)
            {
                throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(formFile));
            }

            using (var fileStream = new FileStream(filename, FileMode.Create))
            {
                var inputStream = formFile.OpenReadStream();
                await inputStream.CopyToAsync(fileStream, DefaultBufferSize, cancellationToken);
            }
        }
    }

[josh-sachs]

Nice feedback. What was your experience with EntityFramework tooling after upgrading? Are you able to do migrations/scaffolding and everything as expected? I hit a roadblock with "ef dbcontext scaffold" and had to revert back to the DEC 2015 builds of RC2 but maybe I'm an anomaly.

[Bartmax]

@kudoz83 I had no issues, i just did 1 migration dotnet ef migrations add ... and went back to rc1 because of not being able to save and refresh.

[cvs79]

Any problems using VS2015. Any tooling or debugging issues you ran into. Or does the Asp.net RC1 tooling installer still work.

[Bartmax]

@cvs79 no tooling for you sir. They are working on the tooling side, but those weren't released yet. Most notably Intellisense on razor pages is broken :(

[fescoffier]

Thanks for the complete nice feedback. I was planning to migrate my own project from RC1 to RC2, this will help me for sure!

[Lutando]

This is good.
Also the ASPNET_ENV/Hosting:Environment moniker has changed to ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT

[RobDeVoer]

I am enjoying the positive vibe here. Have no active projects and some time on my hands so let me know if anyone needs me to try anything out and offer feedback.

[tuespetre]

Added "Microsoft.Extensions.Options.ConfigurationExtensions": "1.0.0-rc2-*" to our project.json to get the 'POCO configuration binding' extension methods back.

[Bartmax]

@tuespetre thank you! I'll give it a try!

[nil4]

@tuespetre I am using the Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.Binder package to get the binder extension methods. I could not find Microsoft.Extensions.Options.ConfigurationExtensions on the aspnetcirelease feed; are you sure that's the right package name?

[tuespetre]

I don't know about aspnetcirelease, but it is there on aspnetvnext and aspnetcidev.

[Cowlephant]

What's going to be easier for me in the long run... updating now in this sort of tumultuous state from RC1, or waiting a while?