Migration from ASP.NET 5 Beta 8 to RC1

ASP.NET 5 release candidate 1 was released on November 18th. Read the announcement here.  The announcement happened during Connect where Microsoft talk about a ton of cool stuff. Hanselman did a great summary here.

One of the big things (for some people) is that with RC1 ASP.NET 5 now has a go live license which means Microsoft will provide support. One thing to note about the go live license is if a RC2 is released the support will immediately drop for RC1 and any application will need to be upgraded to RC2 before getting support. Once the final release is out it will be supported for years it is only the go live license that ends support as soon as the next version with a go live license is released.

To get all the new bits installed, including tooling updates for Visual Studio, head over to https://get.asp.net/. This is one of my favorite parts of the RC. The site will show you the appropriate links for install for the OS you are running on. Just make sure you hit the ASP.NET 5 RC install and not ASP.NET 4.6. The install link will kick you over to the install page of the docs site which provides step by step instructions in addition to the download link for the update.

After completing the install open global.json and update the sdk version to rc1-final.

{
  "projects": [ "src", "test" ],
  "sdk": {
    "version": "1.0.0-rc1-final"
  }
}

Next is project.json the dependencies section as usual. In addition to the change from beta8 to rc1-final a few packages have changed names.

  "dependencies": {
    "EntityFramework.Commands": "7.0.0-rc1-final",
    "EntityFramework.MicrosoftSqlServer": "7.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.AspNet.Authentication.Cookies": "1.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.AspNet.Authentication.Facebook": "1.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.AspNet.Authentication.Google": "1.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.AspNet.Authentication.MicrosoftAccount": "1.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.AspNet.Authentication.Twitter": "1.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.AspNet.Diagnostics": "1.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.AspNet.Diagnostics.Entity": "7.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.AspNet.Identity.EntityFramework": "3.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.AspNet.IISPlatformHandler": "1.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc": "6.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc.TagHelpers": "6.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.AspNet.Server.Kestrel": "1.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.AspNet.StaticFiles": "1.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.AspNet.Tooling.Razor": "1.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.Extensions.CodeGenerators.Mvc": "1.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.FileProviderExtensions": "1.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.Json": "1.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.UserSecrets": "1.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.Extensions.Logging": "1.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.Console": "1.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.Debug": "1.0.0-rc1-final",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.BrowserLink.Loader": "14.0.0-rc1-final"
  }

EntityFramework.SqlServer is not EntityFramework.MicrosoftSqlServer. Configuration and Logging moved from Mircosoft.Framework to Microsoft.Extensions.

Startup.cs had another set of changes this round. First up some namespace changes which are mostly the move from Microsoft.Framework to Microsoft.Extenstions.

Before:
using Microsoft.Dnx.Runtime;
using Microsoft.Framework.Configuration;
using Microsoft.Framework.DependencyInjection;
using Microsoft.Framework.Logging;

After:
using Microsoft.Extensions.PlatformAbstractions;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;
using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;

In the Configure function I was able to enable browser link and it be useable and a slight change to the UseDatabaseErrorPage call.

Before:
if (env.IsDevelopment())
{
    //app.UseBrowserLink();
    app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();
    app.UseDatabaseErrorPage(DatabaseErrorPageOptions.ShowAll);
}

After:
if (env.IsDevelopment())
{
    app.UseBrowserLink();
    app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();
    app.UseDatabaseErrorPage();
}

Finally, a static void main was added for the entry point of the application. Pretty sure the app will still run without this change, but it is included when adding a new application with the updated templates.

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

Entity framework 7 only had a couple of breaking issue which seem to be the team finishing up some API tweaks. Here are the renames I hit this version.

Something else I hit was an unexpected port when I ran the application. There is a new launchSettings.json file in the Project folder which is where things like port can be changed. It also has settings for IIS and IIS Express.

Finally make sure and check out the release page and the breaking changes page for this release.