.NET Standard support

[YoshiRulz]

The netstandard2.0 target was dropped in 0445f50 but it's not clear why. Is it possible to add it back? If not, could you release a 2.4.3 with updated NuGet dependencies?

[amerkoleci]

Hi,
That won't be possible, as I'll need to keep lot of workarounds to support netstandard2.0, if you find clear way feel free to send PR and I can think about it.

Thanks!

[YoshiRulz]

I'm almost done with the modifications to Vortice.Windows—it's compiling, and the total changeset (edit: unlinked as branch was deleted) is fairly small. But to even start it was necessary to temporarily downgrade Vortice.Mathematics to the last version that targeted .NET Standard. I'm now looking at adding the target back to the current Vortice.Mathematics, and I'm guessing that restoring the compile-time guards from amerkoleci/Vortice.Mathematics@3730dd7 will be sufficient.

edit: I see you're in the middle of some refactors, so I'll stop there for now. I hope you end up with less duplicate code and are able to look into shimming Vector128<T> directly (there doesn't seem to be an existing polyfill for it, but I'd be willing to help create one).

[BradChase2011]

YoshiRulz, I'm extremely interested in this if you could keep us updated, I would be in debt. It would be nice to use the latest dx bits that don't exist in SharpDX. It would let us test some more stuff.

[YoshiRulz]

Revisited Vortice.Mathematics this week. I did end up writing a polyfill for Vector128<T>, and that got me most of the way to .NET Standard support. You can see my changeset here. I'm sure maintaining the polyfill in this repo doesn't sound appealing, so I'd like to distribute it on NuGet myself, though I haven't looked much into that, and such a package should probably include the whole API surface whereas I've only done the small fraction that Vortice.Mathematics uses.

[YoshiRulz]

I tried building a few commits but they all failed with something like this:

$> git checkout fd75e80
$> dotnet pack Vortice.Windows.sln --configuration Release -p:Packing=true -p:EnableWindowsTargeting=true
MSBuild version 17.8.0+6cdef4241 for .NET
  Determining projects to restore...
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/tests/Vortice.Dxc.Test/Vortice.Dxc.Test.csproj (in 461 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/tests/Vortice.DXGI.Tests/Vortice.DXGI.Tests.csproj (in 461 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/samples/HelloDirectStorage/HelloDirectStorage.csproj (in 464 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.XAudio2/Vortice.XAudio2.csproj (in 463 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/samples/XInput/HelloXInput.csproj (in 6 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/samples/MediaFoundation/EnumerateDevices/EnumerateDevices.csproj (in 6 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/samples/MediaFoundation/AudioPlay/AudioPlay.csproj (in 9 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/samples/HelloXAudio2/HelloXAudio2.csproj (in 8 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/tests/Vortice.D3DCompiler.Test/Vortice.D3DCompiler.Test.csproj (in 28 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/samples/HelloDirectML/HelloDirectML.csproj (in 25 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/samples/HelloDirectInput/HelloDirectInput.csproj (in 22 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/samples/Vortice.SampleFramework/Vortice.SampleFramework.csproj (in 64 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/samples/HelloDirect3D12Raytracing/HelloDirect3D12Raytracing.csproj (in 13 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/samples/HelloDirect3D12/HelloDirect3D12.csproj (in 16 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/samples/AdvancedTextRenderingApp/AdvancedTextRenderingApp.csproj (in 13 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.XInput/Vortice.XInput.csproj (in 5 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/samples/HelloDirect3D11/HelloDirect3D11.csproj (in 24 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.DirectML/Vortice.DirectML.csproj (in 21 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.UIAnimation/Vortice.UIAnimation.csproj (in 14 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.Dxc/Vortice.Dxc.csproj (in 5 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.MediaFoundation/Vortice.MediaFoundation.csproj (in 8 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.DirectX/Vortice.DirectX.csproj (in 20 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.DirectStorage/Vortice.DirectStorage.csproj (in 9 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.DirectSound/Vortice.DirectSound.csproj (in 7 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.DirectInput/Vortice.DirectInput.csproj (in 21 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.Direct3D9/Vortice.Direct3D9.csproj (in 7 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.DirectComposition/Vortice.DirectComposition.csproj (in 9 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.Direct3D12/Vortice.Direct3D12.csproj (in 11 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.Direct2D1/Vortice.Direct2D1.csproj (in 13 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.Direct3D11/Vortice.Direct3D11.csproj (in 21 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.DXGI/Vortice.DXGI.csproj (in 11 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.D3DCompiler/Vortice.D3DCompiler.csproj (in 12 ms).
  Restored /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.WinUI/Vortice.WinUI.csproj (in 153 ms).
/home/yoshi/.nuget/packages/sharpgentools.sdk/2.1.2-beta/Sdk/Sdk.targets(191,5): error MSB4044: The "SharpGenTask" task was not given a value for the required parameter "CastXmlExecutable". [/home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.Dxc/Vortice.Dxc.csproj]
/home/yoshi/.nuget/packages/sharpgentools.sdk/2.1.2-beta/Sdk/Sdk.targets(191,5): error MSB4044: The "SharpGenTask" task was not given a value for the required parameter "CastXmlExecutable". [/home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.DirectX/Vortice.DirectX.csproj]
  Vortice.XInput -> /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/bin/Vortice.XInput/Release/net7.0/Vortice.XInput.dll
  Vortice.XInput -> /home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/bin/Vortice.XInput/Release/net8.0/Vortice.XInput.dll
/home/yoshi/.nuget/packages/sharpgentools.sdk/2.1.2-beta/Sdk/Sdk.targets(191,5): error MSB4044: The "SharpGenTask" task was not given a value for the required parameter "CastXmlExecutable". [/home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.Direct3D9/Vortice.Direct3D9.csproj]
/home/yoshi/.nuget/packages/sharpgentools.sdk/2.1.2-beta/Sdk/Sdk.targets(191,5): error MSB4044: The "SharpGenTask" task was not given a value for the required parameter "CastXmlExecutable". [/home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.DirectX/Vortice.DirectX.csproj::TargetFramework=net7.0]
/home/yoshi/.nuget/packages/sharpgentools.sdk/2.1.2-beta/Sdk/Sdk.targets(191,5): error MSB4044: The "SharpGenTask" task was not given a value for the required parameter "CastXmlExecutable". [/home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/src/Vortice.UIAnimation/Vortice.UIAnimation.csproj]
  The package Vortice.XInput.3.4.1-beta is missing a readme. Go to https://aka.ms/nuget/authoring-best-practices/readme to learn why package readmes are important.
  Successfully created package '/home/yoshi/Documents/Vortice.Windows/artifacts/Vortice.XInput.3.4.1-beta.nupkg'.

I'm guessing it relates to SharpGenTools/SharpGenTools#111.

My other suggestion remains.

[YoshiRulz]

Actually ours is a WinForms desktop app—.NET Framework WinForms that is. Obviously we'll have to switch UI frameworks in order to move to .NET 8, but we're trying to separate concerns and leave only UI changes for that final PR.

For game dev, can't you use Veldrid + Dear ImGui or something?

[amerkoleci]

As I said, netstandard2.0 isn't coming back to be supported, try other ways like updating to net7 or net8, or fork the project and add it back (if you want to maintain separate fork OFC).

[BradChase2011]

Why can't you move to .net 8 with WinForms? Seems that would be the path of least resistance, not to mention a hell of a lot faster. As for us, we have our own engine and multiple targets OSs, we wanted to hit Xbox community but like I said I doubt Microsoft will even have that around much longer considering they don't even bother updating their support docs any longer and UWP has been deprecated. I can't think of any other reason netstandard2 would even be needed outside of that. Is there a reason you haven't moved to .net8 with WinForms?

[YoshiRulz]

The app runs on both Windows and Linux, and formerly macOS too, which we may yet return to. The new WinForms is Windows-only.

In hindsight it does seem like .NET Standard was a failed experiment. I expect that once we've moved to .NET 8, all our internal-use libraries which currently target .NET Standard will be retargeted as well.

[BradChase2011]

Oh wow, I had no idea the old WinForms could run outside of windows. Ya learn something new every day :).

[MarcioAB]

Using Net 8 with Windows Forms here.
Not sure if I understood the issue.

[YoshiRulz]

Assuming this is a reply to #416 (reply in thread): The WinForms you're familiar with is Windows-only. The old one was cross-platform if you stuck to the beaten track.