Post

Coding To Support Both .NET Full Framework and Modern .NET

Posted
By Ken Dale 1 min read

Sometimes when writing .NET libraries we want to support .NET Full Framework, as well as modern .NET. In many cases the functionality is the same, but sometimes it is different.

For the cases where functionality needs to be different there’s two main concerns:

Different code paths

In many cases the code between .NET Full Framework and modern .NET can be the same for both target frameworks. But, for the cases it needs to be different we can use #if / #endif preprocessor directives to specify when code should be used.

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using System;
using Dependency.For.Both.Target.Frameworks;

#if NETSTANDARD2_0
using Dependency.For.NETSTANDARD2_0.Only;
#endif

#if NET462
using Dependency.For.NET462.Only;
#endif

namespace MyLibrary
{
    public class MyClass
    {
        public void Run()
        {
#if NETSTANDARD2_0
            Console.WriteLine("netstandard2.0 only");
#endif

#if NET462
            Console.WriteLine(".NET Full Framework only");
#endif

            Console.WriteLine("Both target frameworks");
        }
    }
}

You can get as creative with this technique as you’d like, including constructor parameters. You can wrap entire files with #if NET462 / #endif even!

Different dependencies (NuGet packages)

Sometimes you may need different NuGet packages to handle a specific target framework only. We can use a Condition to scope PackageReference items to specific target frameworks.

See example MyPackage.csproj:

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<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <TargetFrameworks>netstandard2.0;net462</TargetFrameworks>
  </PropertyGroup>

  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="Something.For.Both.Full.Framework.And.NetStandard" Version="1.0.0" />
  </ItemGroup>

  <ItemGroup Condition="'$(TargetFramework)' == 'netstandard2.0'">
    <PackageReference Include="Something.For.NetStandard.Only" Version="1.0.0" />
  </ItemGroup>

  <ItemGroup Condition="'$(TargetFramework)' == 'net462'">
    <PackageReference Include="Something.For.Full.Framework.Only" Version="1.0.0" />
  </ItemGroup>

</Project>

Summary

Writing code to support .NET Full Framework and modern .NET can bring about some extra work, but in cases where you need or want to support both this can help!

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This post is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by the author.