Just pitching in here that this is super important for us, as we are moving from WCF to gRPC specifically to allow gradual movement from legacy .NET to NET5+. I considered screaming loudly during the initial announcement, but apparently other people did that for me in the meantime ;).
After the maintenance period ends, it would be good to retain a way to make a release, in case there are some emergency changes that need to go in (and can be done without much effort). Or, there should be a natural way for people to make the builds on their own build machines if they need to use a self-patched version in their products. On Tuesday, May 3, 2022 at 12:25:07 PM UTC+3 Jan Tattermusch wrote: > Hello gRPC C# Users! > > In May 2021 we announced <https://grpc.io/blog/grpc-csharp-future/> that > Grpc.Core (the original C# implementation of gRPC) became "maintenance > only" and that grpc-dotnet will be the recommended implementation going > forward. We also announced that Grpc.Core will become deprecated in the > future. > > While all the above is still the plan, we are making some adjustments > based on the user feedback we received. We also wanted to publish more > details about the plan and its technical execution. All the important > updates are summarized in the following sections of this announcement. > Grpc.Core maintenance period will be extended by 1 more year (until May > 2023) > > Originally we planned to deprecate the Grpc.Core implementation in May > 2022, but the feedback we received from users has indicated that extending > the maintenance period would make sense. Without going too much into the > details, the main points of the feedback can be summarized as: > > - > > The main blocker for deprecating Grpc.Core is the lack of support of > the legacy .NET Framework in grpc-dotnet. The desire to migrate off the > legacy .NET framework is often there, but migrating workloads from .NET > Framework to .NET Core / .NET 6 simply takes time and effort. > - > > Grpc.Core is a very important technology for enabling migration off > .NET Framework (since it enables piece-by-piece migration by > interconnecting components on newer .NET platforms with components that > remain on .NET Framework), so supporting it for a little longer can > (somewhat paradoxically) help users migrate off it faster. > > > As a result, we are delaying the deprecation of Grpc.Core until May 2023 > (1 year from now, and 2 years after the original announcement). Until > then, Grpc.Core will remain to be supported in the "maintenance mode", as > described below. > > Since the plan to deprecate Grpc.Core has been now publicly known for a > while and since the main reason we are extending the maintenance period is > to deal with the issues related to the legacy .NET Framework (and migration > off it), we also want to clarify what exactly will be covered by the > "Grpc.Core maintenance" going forward: > > - > > The main goal of keeping Grpc.Core alive is to maintain the ability to > run gRPC C# clients and servers on the legacy .NET Framework on Windows. > This will be taken into account when considering issues / fixes. > - > > We will only provide critical and security fixes going forward. This > is to minimize the maintenance costs and reflects the fact that > grpc-dotnet > is the recommended implementation to use. > - > > There will be no new features for Grpc.Core. Note that since Grpc.Core > is moving to a maintenance branch (see section below), there will also be > no new features coming from the native C-core layer. > - > > There will be no new platform support and portability work. The focus > will be on continuing support for the legacy .NET Framework on Windows > (where there is no alternative implementation to use) and the list of > supported platforms will not be expanded (e.g. we will not work towards > better support for Unity, Xamarin, Alpine Linux etc.). We will likely drop > support for platforms that have been so far considered as "experimental" > (e.g. Unity and Xamarin), since they are also hard to test and maintain. > - > > Work to support new .NET versions (.NET6, NET 7, …) will be kept to a > minimum (or not done at all) since those .NET versions fully support > grpc-dotnet. > - > > No more performance work: Since the main purpose of Grpc.Core is to > maintain interoperability with legacy .NET framework, there will be less > focus on performance. We do not expect any significant performance drops, > but performance may degrade over time if tradeoffs between performance vs > maintainability are needed. > > > Grpc.Core moves to a maintenance branch in the grpc/grpc repository (while > other actively developed packages move to grpc/grpc-dotnet repository) > > To simplify the maintenance of Grpc.Core, we decided to move the the > Grpc.Core implementation to a maintenance branch (v1.46.x > <https://github.com/grpc/grpc/tree/v1.46.x> on the grpc/grpc repository), > where it will continue to receive security and critical fixes, but will not > be slowing down the development of the native C-core library it is based on > (it will be based on a maintenance version of C-core in the same branch). > > Since originally the grpc/grpc <https://github.com/grpc/grpc> repository > was a home to more NuGet packages than just Grpc.Core, we are actually > doing a split: Grpc.Core and the related packages (e.g. Grpc, Grpc.Core, > Grpc.Core.Testing, Grpc.Core.NativeDebug, ...) will be moved to the > maintenance branch, while other packages (Grpc.Core.Api, Grpc.Auth, > Grpc.HealthCheck, Grpc.Reflection and eventually also Grpc.Tools) will be > moved to the grpc/grpc-dotnet <https://github.com/grpc/grpc-dotnet> > repository where there will continue to be developed. This technical > solution will ensure that Grpc.Core stays stable and maintainable and the > other packages that are also used by grpc-dotnet will have a new home going > forward and can continue to evolve (and they will already be in the right > place once Grpc.Core actually goes out of support in the future). > > More details about the solution we chose can be found in the csharp's > README <https://github.com/grpc/grpc/blob/master/src/csharp/README.md>. > > Feel free to reply to this announcement with follow up questions and > requests for clarification. For major issues connected to the > migration/deprecation plan, you can file an issue on github as usual. > > On behalf of the gRPC team, > > Jan > -- > > Jan Tattermusch > > Software Engineer > > > Google Germany GmbH > > Erika-Mann-Straße 33 > > 80636 München > > Geschäftsführer: Paul Manicle, Liana Sebastian > > Registergericht und -nummer: Hamburg, HRB 86891 > > Sitz der Gesellschaft: Hamburg > > Diese E-Mail ist vertraulich. Falls sie diese fälschlicherweise erhalten > haben sollten, leiten Sie diese bitte nicht an jemand anderes weiter, > löschen Sie alle Kopien und Anhänge davon und lassen Sie mich bitte wissen, > dass die E-Mail an die falsche Person gesendet wurde. > > > > This e-mail is confidential. If you received this communication by > mistake, please don't forward it to anyone else, please erase all copies > and attachments, and please let me know that it has gone to the wrong > person. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "grpc.io" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to grpc-io+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/grpc-io/19e50173-fb04-4879-a8df-5408cba50c7an%40googlegroups.com.
