Update Octopus Server to .NET 8 #8503
Description
The enhancement
The Need
The Octopus Server is currently built using .NET 6. It packages a copy of the .NET 6 runtime. It goes out of support in November 2024.
.NET 8 is now available, bringing with it performance improvements, reduced memory consumption, and is supported until November 2026, as well as many features our developers can use to write code more effectively.
Solution
In 2024.1, Octopus Server has been upgraded from .NET 6. to .NET 8 which, along with other optimisations, has resulted in significant performance improvements across the platform. We benchmarked the 60 most commonly used endpoints in our REST API, and observed an average 16% reduction in latency. The biggest improvement was 60% faster than the prior 2023.4 release, with equal-or reduced memory consumption in all cases.
Note: The version of .NET used by Octopus Server is bundled as part of the installation media. Customers who self-host Octopus do not need to install anything separately before upgrading to this version.
Note: While the Octopus Server bundles a copy of Tentacle, and a lot of deployment tools collectively referred to as Calamari, these are not being updated at this time. They will continue to use .NET 6 and/or the .NET 4.x Frameworks, and will be updated later.