.NET Upgrade Assistant (Preview)

Note Starting with version 0.5.641.28275 we changed the installation of this extension to not require Admin permissions and install per-user. It should update automatically, however if you see issues with updating to this or newer version, please uninstall existing extension manually and install the latest version (this should be done only once, next updates should be working as usual).

The goal of this extension is to assist in upgrading your .NET applications to the latest versions of .NET. After installing the extension, you can right-click in Solution Explorer on the project you want to upgrade, choose “Upgrade” and follow the steps.

See the Upgrade Assistant blog post for more information.

Supported .NET upgrades:

• .NET Framework to .NET 6+ (including .NET 9.0 Preview)
• .NET Core to .NET 6+ (including .NET 9.0 Preview)
• Any .NET version to .NET 6+ (including .NET 9.0 Preview) that is higher than the current version
• Azure Functions v1, v2, v3 to v4 isolated (targeting net6.0 or net7.0)
• Xamarin.Forms to MAUI
  • Note: For Xamarin->MAUI .xaml file transformations the Upgrade Assistant includes basic namespace replacements. More comprehensive .xaml file transformations require Visual Studio 17.6.

Supported project types:

• ASP.NET
• Azure Functions
• WPF
• WinForms
• Class libraries
• Console
• Xamarin.Forms
• .NET MAUI
• UWP

Coming soon:

• WCF to WCF Core upgrade

If you run into any issues or have suggestions for improvements, please report feedback in Visual Studio (see Report a Problem).

Versions:

• 0.5.829.41291

  • Support for .NET 9.0
  • Multiple stabilization and bug fixes

• 0.5.820.28361

  • Stabilization release, multiple bugs and feedback issues resolved

• 0.5.793.65096

  • Added solution upgrade to NuGet Central Package Management
  • Accessibility fixes for analysis HTML report
  • Increased lower bound for supported Visual Studio versions to 17.3
  • Fixed package loading regression for Visual Studio Versions below or at 17.8

• 0.5.764.42881

  • Support for updating dependencies specified outside of project files (imported targets, NuGet central package management props etc)
  • More localization fixes
  • Accessibility fixes
  • Customer feedback bug fixes

• 0.5.711.53382

  • Localization

• 0.5.678.21462

  • Added Third Party API and Package Map Support

• 0.5.651.27530

  • Improved breaking changes analysis
  • Added privacy mode (Unrestricted, Protected, Restricted) which controls how much data is included in incident snippets when reports are exported

• 0.5.641.28275

  • Change installation to not require an Admin mode and install per-user.
  • more Aspire breaking changes transformations

• 0.5.617.36348

  • .NET Aspire feature upgrade
  • Solution upgrade analysis

• 0.5.585.50603

  • .NET 9.0 Preview1 upgrades

• 0.5.568.12974

  • .NET 8.0 GA upgrades
  • Maui upgrades improvements
  • bug fixes and usability improvements

• 0.5.261.51392

  • Added support for project features upgrades in addition to framework upgrades and added first project feature upgrade for non-Sdk projects to convert project file to Sdk style without any other changes, keeping TFM the same.
  • Added C# code analyzer that offers upgrade code fix suggestions for manual migration scenarios when Xamarin Forms code is detected in .NET MAUI projects
  • Support upgrades for projects that don't have *.sln files
  • More transformations during upgrades
  • Bug fixes:
    • Avoid long retries when files are not found in new projects
    • Stabilize project reload during upgrades and ensure it reloads without problems.

• 0.5.33.164

  • Integration with new CLI dotnet tool upgrade-assistant, now dotnet tool does exactly same upgrades for applicable projects as Visual Studio extension
  • Performance and stabilization fixes (exceptions when project reloads during upgrade and other)
  • More upgrades added, including better upgrades of packages when upgrading from netcoreapp1.0-net5.0 to new .NET

• 0.1.280.25227

  • Bug fixes for Xamarin.Forms to MAUI upgrades

• 0.1.262.23624

  • Support for Azure Functions upgrades from v1, v2, v3 to v4
  • support for Xamarin.Forms to MAUI upgrades
  • support preview to preview upgrades for net8.0
  • fix bug supported TFM matrix and add upgrades for netcoreapp2.1 and netcoreapp2.2 targeting apps
  • Copy all files in a batch early in the upgrade instead copying them one be one during side-by-side upgrade

• 0.1.201.39690

  • Upgrade for Xamarin to MAUI
  • Upgrade for UWP to WinUI
  • Improved experience for upgrades to ward .NET 6+, with cohesive standard NuGet packages upgrade where package versions match target .NET version
  • ARM64 support
  • Improved error handling and display of all errors or warnings for corresponding project components
  • Improved NuGet packages and other project dependencies upgrade
  • support for incremental upgrade for SDK style web projects with SupportsSystemWeb capability
  • bug fixes and stabilization

• 0.1.4.36557

  • Initial preview of upgrade experience for ASP.NET, WPF, WinForms, Class Libraries, Console apps
  • Supported upgrades in-place, side-by-side and side-by-side incremental for corresponding project flavors
  • Upgrade from .NET Framework to .NET 6+ and initial flow of upgrades from .NET 6 to higher .NET versions
  • AMD64 support