Convert the main project to SDK style?

[martin-honnen]

New projects, even for .NET framework, are written in SDK style instead of MSBuild style. The .NET Upgrade assistant has an item "Convert project to SDK-style" but somehow what I get from that conversion doesn't build a plugin anymore. I was wondering whether you as the author have considered or have the knowledge to convert the project to SDK style.

I write code even for .NET framework often with the help of the IKVM and IKVM.Maven.Sdk projects/Nuget packages, allowing me to pull in Java packages (e.g. Saxon 12 for XSLT 3 or XQuery 3.1 or the XML Schema 1.1 version of Apache Xerces. Unfortunately the IKVM use is only possible with SDK styles projects.

I see that the example dependency project seems to be SDK style, however, perhaps that will already allow me to pull in IKVM, need to investigate that next.

Nevertheless I am opening this issue to ask whether you would know how to convert the main project to SDK style, I am afraid I am lost with the errors or failures (0 built, 0 failed, 1 skipped) VS gives me for rebuilding after using the upgrade assistant for the conversion to SDK style.

[molsonkiko]

Unfortunately I cannot understand a lot of the jargon and abbreviations you used, so I can't help you.

You are welcome to submit a PR that implements any changes you think would be beneficial, but if I can't figure out how to test the PR and verify it doesn't cause regressions on my machine I will just reject it.

[martin-honnen]

Which abbreviations are that that you don't understand? SDK style, MSBuild style? .NET Upgrade Assistant? Of the .NET Upgrade assistant I only try to use the feature "Convert project to SDK-style", it's task is basically to convert a project from the style/format you have in https://github.com/molsonkiko/NppCSharpPluginPack/blob/main/NppCSharpPluginPack/NppCSharpPluginPack.csproj to the style/format you have in https://github.com/molsonkiko/NppCSharpPluginPack/blob/main/ExampleDependency/ExampleDependency.csproj.

I hope that at least explains (a bit better) what I am trying/looking for.

Thanks for reading, I will try to see whether I reach something that is worth a PR, as I said, so far the basic "convert project to SDK-style" does its job in terms of the csproj format conversion but somehow that flawed that VS doesn't build that Npp plugin anymore.

IKVM and IKVM.Maven.Sdk are NuGet packages.

Saxon and Xerces are Java packages that implement the XSLT 3.0 standard and the XQuery 3.1 standard (Saxon) and the XML Schema 1.1 specification (Xerces) that I would like to use in a Npp plugin with the help of the IKVM/IKVM.Maven.Sdk packages. These are just my current use cases, not really relevant for the issue, which is the conversion of the project to SDK style.

[molsonkiko]

@martin-honnen

OK, thank you for explaining what you're aiming to do.

Now that it's clear to me that you want to change the format of the csproj file, I am more skeptical of what you're asking for, largely because NppCSharpPluginPack.csproj already has build actions that I think only work with MSBuild. I suppose there are other ways I could automatically perform those actions before building my project, but it is important to me that they get performed somehow.

[martin-honnen]

Let's put this on hold, after some struggle I had some initial progress to use IKVM as part of DependencyExample so it might be I don't need a change to the main plugin project format. I need some days to explore that before knowing it works out.

[molsonkiko]

@martin-honnen

If you were having success including some code as part of DependencyExample, you might be able to achieve what you want by just adding a new Reference block to the csproj, or just replace the name of the dependency in the block I linked above.