try-convert VS CsprojToVs2017

dotnet upgrade assistant or dotnet try-convert can help with that.

- dotnet try-convert: https://github.com/dotnet/try-convert

try-convert

Check out https://github.com/dotnet/try-convert

https://github.com/dotnet/try-convert (usually) makes this a breeze.

I'm looking to move one of our software suites from .NET Framework 4.7 to .NET 6. A lot of online guides recommend starting with the Microsoft conversion tools to ease/speed up the process. There seem to be two tools that are used for it try-convert and upgrade-assistant. However, I'm not sure I understand the difference between them and when should I use which tool (assuming that it matters).

That would mean you have pretty simple code then, relatively speaking. I helped write the underlying project conversion tool used in the Migration Assistant and found that there's a lot of big and incompatible differences well before you even get into which APIs you're using. Lots of enterprise apps end up using them, whether or not the authors of those apps are aware of it.

migrate to SDK-style project files - try-convert does wonders here

Are you using .NET SDK-style projects, or the old scary ones? The latter should load, but since you can't even create them anymore I would expect them to bit rot over time. The try-convert tool should be able to help with that (I wrote most of it, plus the F# support!)

there's https://github.com/dotnet/try-convert. Haven't tried it; I instead use https://github.com/hvanbakel/CsprojToVs2017, but I assume the former might be a better choice by now.

Yes, probably. Try the guide at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/winforms/migration/?view=netdesktop-7.0. I personally prefer the tool https://github.com/hvanbakel/CsprojToVs2017/, but it's a bit more manual.

There are a few tools that can help in the process. Years back I used a tool named Project2015to2017: https://github.com/hvanbakel/CsprojToVs2017. Since then, Microsoft also released a tool: https://github.com/dotnet/upgrade-assistant. There was also this tool but it looks like it has been discontinued: https://github.com/microsoft/dotnet-apiport

https://github.com/hvanbakel/CsprojToVs2017 to convert projects to the new format. This is much nicer in multiple ways: VS doesn’t need to reload the project when it changes, version control changes are much less noisy, you get a Dependencies node in Solution Explorer instead of the old References one, etc.

There is a much better tool for that: https://github.com/hvanbakel/CsprojToVs2017

I've been a bit luckier in that regard, but I'm not sure if your path wouldn't have taken less effort. I use https://github.com/hvanbakel/CsprojToVs2017 (dotnet migrate-2019 wizard) to modernize the projects, then further tweak them by hand. For ASP.NET projects, it's indeed a very difficult road. WebForms outright doesn't exist, and Core is very different from MVC in some areas. https://github.com/CZEMacLeod/MSBuild.SDK.SystemWeb helps somewhat.

there's https://github.com/dotnet/try-convert. Haven't tried it; I instead use https://github.com/hvanbakel/CsprojToVs2017, but I assume the former might be a better choice by now.

I personally used https://github.com/hvanbakel/CsprojToVs2017 to port an existing 450+ projects solution using the old .csproj format to the new one. I had to manually fixup some projects afterwards but overall a good experience.