End-of-life'd .NET support

[kfcampbell]

Currently, we have several repositories that still use .NET 5 and other previous end-of-life'd versions of .NET (see the .NET support calendar here).

I think it would be appropriate to make .NET 6 the floor of our versions and shoot to build and publish using .NET 6 everywhere, as it's the current LTS version and will be supported until November 2024. Thoughts?

[timheuer]

Depending on how long you anticipate this effort to take, .NET8 will ship in Nov this year...better to jump on that with maybe using v6 as a prepatory stepping stone to identify if at all any breaking changes to accommodate.

[kfcampbell]

Ooh, good catch! Waiting for .NET 8 seems like a reasonable approach to me.

[timheuer]

If there is an effort starting now, we just released Preview 7 for .NET 8 and can start making the move toward that to be immediately ready for RC/release ;-)

[kfcampbell]

Realistically, GitHub's SDK team will not get to this in the immediate/near future. I think it's likely that we can easily wait until November.

[eriawan]

@kfcampbell

Ooh, good catch! Waiting for .NET 8 seems like a reasonable approach to me.

I suggest we can start to support .NET 7 first now, because I think having .NET 7 support also means that we will be more prepared for .NET 8 after .NET 8 is released in November.
Let me know what do you think.

[kfcampbell]

I hear that, I just don't think realistically my team will be able to slot both of those upgrades in in time.

[eriawan]

Makes sense. Putting more focus on .NET 8 seems reasonable and since it is also LTS, it gives us enough time to keep supporting it.