v7: Drop .NET6 as supported framework.

[danielchalmers]

Description

Part of #8435

• Drops support for .NET 6 as done in v7: Drop .net6.0 support #7134
• Updates Minimal Prerequisites to Compile from Source
• PackageProjectUrl is now https
• README
  • Minor cleanup
  • Combines 6.0.x and 6.1.x into 6.x.x for simplicity
  • Adds 7.x.x for the new branch and only states support for .NET7 and .NET 8
  • Adds a link to the render modes page to avoid questions
  • Adds new text to Contributing including from the issue template

How Has This Been Tested?

Types of changes

• Bug fix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue)
• New feature (non-breaking change which adds functionality)
• Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to not work as expected)

Checklist:

• The PR is submitted to the correct branch (dev).
• My code follows the code style of this project.
• I've added relevant tests.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests ✅

Project coverage is 88.79%. Comparing base (1a3d242) to head (7d354bf).
Report is 8 commits behind head on dev.

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##              dev    #8441      +/-   ##
==========================================
+ Coverage   88.77%   88.79%   +0.02%     
==========================================
  Files         416      416              
  Lines       12372    12307      -65     
  Branches     2459     2447      -12     
==========================================
- Hits        10983    10928      -55     
+ Misses        859      842      -17     
- Partials      530      537       +7     

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[ScarletKuro]

Hi.

What everyone thinks of dropping .net7?

My view: For me it's not about when the supports ends, but about features. Blazor develops fast, and .NET7 brought new binding that can make our life better and we need them. The .NET8 didn't bring any useful public API for razor class library.
And biggest reason to be against it is that trymudblazor doesn't support .net8.

[mikes-gh]

@danielchalmers Even if we did remove net7 this PR will have to remain open until EOS for net7 and a bit longer after that.
I am not sure dropping it has any immediate benefits though.

As @ScarletKuro says we would need to solve trymudblazor running on net8 only. You are welcome to look at that repo to see if you can solve it. It will probably take you a while to understand the history of the original fork and how we have modified it over the years. We've all looked at it and decided ATM its a lot of work. But a new set of eyes might help.

[ScarletKuro]

@danielchalmers can you reclassify this PR in dropping only .net6 as we all agreed in discord back then when this was done: #7134?
Also i forgot to say that good reason to drop .net6 is that if you using it's sdk for compilation, it contains some bugs in razor source generator that won't be fixed and it's not compatible with MudBlazor: #6886 (comment)

[danielchalmers]

I believe that if Microsoft isn't going to support it, you shouldn't either. If someone wants to stay on .NET 7 they don't have to go to a new major version of MudBlazor when 6.x.x is still supported. Dropping .NET 7 mid-cycle would be another breaking change so would support a dead version til v8.

We should be able to get TryMudBlazor to .NET 8 soon - MudBlazor/TryMudBlazor#121.

[henon]

.NET 7 EOS is May 14, 2024 so very soon.

We will be making a lot more breaking changes in the future. After v7 we'll soon go for v8, v9 and v10 as we have let ourselves become constrained by avoiding breaking changes for far too long. This has hindered innovation and improvement in the library so I wouldn't worry about having to do another breaking change soon ;). The idea of THE BIG BREAK has been abandoned. Instead we'll gradually break everything we need to break to make the lib better.

I personally think it is a bit too soon to abandon net7 as dropping it forces everyone to also upgrade to net8 if they want the new features or fixes. And I don't see a huge merit of dropping it now. But in the end it is up to the team to decide.

We had a preliminary decision against dropping net7 in the discord channel but not everyone participated at that time. We can make a final decision here in the issue @MudBlazor/contribution-team

[Yomodo]

Please, do not drop .NET 7 support yet.
Migration is on our backlog and we've started with our backend systems,
but dropping .NET 7 soon will force us to migrate our frontends for which we currently have little to no resources.

[danielchalmers]

Please, do not drop .NET 7 support yet. Migration is on our backlog and we've started with our backend systems, but dropping .NET 7 soon will force us to migrate our frontends for which we currently have little to no resources.

@Yomodo Will you be on .NET 8 before Microsoft ends support for .NET 7?

.NET 6 should be a more concerning drop considering it's supported longer and most enterprise will stick with LTS

[Yomodo]

@Yomodo Will you be on .NET 8 before Microsoft ends support for .NET 7?

Hopefully, but can't say for certain.
Currently most of our time goes into backend testing as those do all the heavy work.

[ScarletKuro]

I added .net7 back to csproj and in README.MD.
The rest i left as is, the .net8 SDK in CONTRIBUTING.md, I think you don't need to have SDK7 installed to compile mudblazor from souce even with multi targeting.

[ScarletKuro]

Link to guide: #8447