Updating TargetFramework for .NET

[sindrekroknes]

How are you running Renovate?

Self-hosted

If you're self-hosting Renovate, tell us what version of Renovate you run.

37.59.0

If you're self-hosting Renovate, select which platform you are using.

Azure DevOps (dev.azure.com)

Was this something which used to work for you, and then stopped?

I never saw this working

Wanted end result.

I want Renovate to update the TargetFramework for .NET projects. Is this possible currently?

What you tried so far.

I'm getting PRs like "Update dotnet monorepo to v7 (major)", that update NuGet packages and docker images. Would be nice if they also could update TargetFramework
Didn't find anything about this in the docs.

Relevant debug logs

No response

[github-actions[bot]]

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[rarkins]

I'm not aware of this capability. Please create a minimal reproduction to demonstrate

[sindrekroknes]

Not sure what you mean with packageFiles with updates. Updating NuGet packages in the .csproj files is supported, but it doesn't touch the target framework

I think the feed used in the Dotnet Version Datasource would be better than using Docker. The Docker images usually remove the pre-release tag when the first Release Candidate is release, which may be a bit early.

[rarkins]

It looks like some of these existing test fixtures already include the field you'd like to update? https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Arenovatebot%2Frenovate+TargetFramework+path%3A%2F%5Elib%5C%2Fmodules%5C%2Fmanager%5C%2Fnuget%5C%2F__fixtures__%5C%2F%2F&type=code

However they are sometimes a bit different, e.g.

<PropertyGroup>
  <TargetFramework>netcoreapp1.1</TargetFramework>
  <Version>0.2.0</Version>
</PropertyGroup>

[sindrekroknes]

All .csproj files should have the TargetFramework property. Can't find anywhere Renovate uses it for anything

.NET versions before they "merged" .NET Core and .NET Framework, with .NET 5.0, had different TFMs (Target Framework Monikers)
All newer versions follows the netX.X format

Tried to find a list of supported TFMs, but couldn't find one that's machine readable. Best i found was this

[sindrekroknes]

There are some OS-specific TFMs, like net6.0-windows and net6.0-ios, for enabling OS-specific APIs. If we want to upgrade those replacing just the version part should work.

And you can use <TargetFrameworks> to set multiple TFMs. But when using this you probably don't want Renovate to update it, except maybe when targeting multiple OS-specific TFMs for the same .NET version

[rcdailey]

All .csproj files should have the TargetFramework property.

This is not true. In my case, I have the .NET framework version centrally located and none of my .csproj files specify it.

If Renovate did upgrade the .NET version, it would need to check multiple locations. I think the value in Renovate updating it (or at least being aware of it, to the extent that it knows not to update other things until it is done manually) helps to prevent the issues with nuget package upgrades mentioned in the OP.

But it's also a simple matter to ignore the PRs until someone does the necessary manual changes.