Upgrade to net8, migrated to sdk style project files, upgraded vcproj…

[vladimir-aubrecht]

Hi,

I tried to modernise the project files and runtimes little bit by following:

• Upgraded to SDK style project files
• Upgraded to Net8
• Upgraded toolset for vcprojects

I guess it could bring some performance improvement, but my main motivation behind this was interoperability as original net frameworks officially works only on Windows and I'm starting to play (again) Classic UO on Mac these days 😊 I understand it still needs a lot of work to get there, but felt it's nice improvement and it's in the direction anyway 😊

[markdwags]

Thanks for the PR. Unfortunately moving the project to dotnet8 at this moment would render it no longer able to work with ClassicUO (which is why I haven't moved it to dotnet8).

ClassicUO with dotnet8 has a .NET 4.7.2 wrapper that is used to launch the assistant, but requires the assistant to be compiled in 4.7.2. Also, with dotnet8, on Mac and Linux, Winforms isn't available, so one would lose the ability to use Razor on a non-Windows OS.

[vladimir-aubrecht]

I understand and don't worry, I was expecting it will not go through easily, but felt like good start moving it forward 😊

Actually for ClassicUO, they can easily compile with newer version of dotnet, but the reason why they don't do that is because plugins are still using net framework ... They have this issue with some ideas of how to get around it.

The Winforms are trickier, but I was thinking maybe it could be replaced by open source & crossplatform reimplementation of Winforms: https://github.com/modern-forms/Modern.Forms

Did not tested it yet neither did proper research around it yet, just an idea on my side at this moment.