Migration to .NET 6 (OpenSSL 3.0 and M1 architecture support)

[alexander-smolyakov]

Description

At the moment Azure Pipelines Agent targets the .NET Core v.3.1. We need to migrate it to .NET 6 to provide support for:

• OpenSSL 3.0
• Native support for M1 architecture

Current progress

• Update codebase to target .Net 6
• Update release pipeline to provide a native build for the M1 platform
• Update CI checks to test new platforms (In progress)
• Verify and test the agent update process for the self-hosted pipeline agents
• Test the Azure Pipelines Agent build on the main target platforms (In progress)

Testing

OS (Reduction + Version)	Architecture	Testing Status
Windows 7 SP1 ESU	x64	Completed
Windows 8.1	x64	Completed
Windows 10	x64	Completed
Windows 10	x86	Completed
Windows 11	x64	Completed
Windows Server 2022 Standard	x64	Completed
Windows Server 2019 Standard	x64	Completed
Windows Server 2016	x64	Completed
Windows Server 2012	x64	Completed
CentOS 8	x64	Completed
Debian 10	x64	Completed
Fedora 33	x64	Completed
Linux Mint 17	x64	Completed
RHEL 9	x64	Completed
Suse Enterprise 12.3	x64	Completed
Ubuntu 18.04	x64	Completed
Ubuntu 20.04	x64	Completed
Ubuntu 22.04	x64	Completed
Ubuntu 22.04	arm32	Completed
Ubuntu 22.04	arm64	Completed
Debian 10	arm32	Completed
MacOS 12	x64	Completed
MacOS 12	arm64	Completed

Breaking changes

• Dropped support for RHEL 6 - Related announcement
• The AZP_AGENT_USE_LEGACY_HTTP agent knob will be deprecated - Related announcement

Questions

TBD

Mitigation ways

TBD

[alexisatkinson]

Given that .NET Core 3.1 is EOL on 13th December 2022 and the .NET 6 move appears to be a pre-requisite for Ubuntu 22.04 support, is there a view on the likely ETA for .NET 6 support to drop?

[sanderdam]

Just out of curiosity...
The AgentService project targets .Net Framework 4.5.
Are there plans for also migrating this to .Net6?

[sphanley]

We're now past the End of Support date for .Net Core 3.1. Is there any timeline available yet for when the .Net 6 migration is expected to be complete and released to users?

[MichelZ]

Another month passed by. What's the status of this? @alexander-smolyakov

[alexander-smolyakov]

Hey @MichelZ, I'm no longer working on this project. Probably @kirill-ivlev @LiliaSabitova @max-zaytsev could share the current status of this migration.

[alexisatkinson]

Not sure why it hasn't been posted here previously, but worth reading:

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/devops/upgrade-of-net-agent-for-azure-pipelines/

The current (as of writing) pre-release .NET build agent version is at https://github.com/microsoft/azure-pipelines-agent/releases (see the v3.x releases further down the page)

[sphanley]

Huge thanks for calling that out, @alexisatkinson. It's really frustrating to know that my team could have begun testing the MacOS arm64 runner months ago if Microsoft had just linked that announcement here.

[kirill-ivlev]

@sphanley sorry for the lack of updates in this ticket, in general, we have completed all required testing and started to provide public releases, you can find it on our Releases page.
We will be appreciated any feedback regarding the new agent.

We will update this ticket once the agent will roll out in the main distribution channel.

[hheexx]

@kirill-ivlev It would be nice to have a way to update without reinstalling.
You could add update command to v2 cmd or something in web admin for agent pools.
Something like prerelase update channel.

[amrmesbah]

@kirill-ivlev is there any estimation on when this will be rolled out to the main channel?

[Muhammed9991]

Looks like everything is completed. Do we have a timeline for when this will merged?

[lietu]

So, if I download the latest pre-release version 3.217.0, I still have to do these manual patches to get it to install and run on Ubuntu 22.04:

sed -i "s@liblttng-ust0@liblttng-ust1@g" bin/installdependencies.sh
sed -i "s@libssl1\.1@libssl3@g" bin/installdependencies.sh
sed -i "s@libicu67@libicu70@g" bin/installdependencies.sh

Hope these get actually incorporated into the project, but for anyone else this might be all you really need right now to get it running on the almost a year old Ubuntu LTS.

[kuqin12]

Is there any plan to add the support for Windows ARM64? Or the Windows x64 release from the table is considered the coverage for Windows ARM64 arch as well?

[sphanley]

I see that the last two 3.x agent releases are no longer marked "prerelease". Does this mean it's considered to be stable and official at this point? Has there been any communication on the topic?

[hheexx]

It has been pushed to updates, you can update to 3.x from web UI

[kirill-ivlev]

@sphanley Yes, the 3.x agent is in a stable and official release.

Some useful information also might be found in this blog post.

Closing this ticket since no future action is required.