Introduction of new meta-package "Microsoft.AspNetCore.App"

[DamianEdwards]

Overview

ASP.NET Core 2.1 will introduce a new meta-package for use by applications: Microsoft.AspNetCore.App. Additionally, new projects created that target 2.1 will use this meta-package by default, rather than the existing meta-package Microsoft.AspNetCore.All.

The new meta-package differs from the existing meta-package in that it reduces the number of dependencies of packages not owned or supported by the ASP.NET or .NET teams to just those deemed necessary to ensure the major frameworks features function. The full list of packages being removed compared to Microsoft.AspNetCore.All can be seen below.

The existing Microsoft.AspNetCore.All meta-package will continue to be made available throughout the 2.x lifecycle, but we recommend customers move to the new Microsoft.AspNetCore.App meta-pacakge and then add individual references to any of the removed packages if their app requires it.

Package references not in "Microsoft.AspNetCore.App", compared to "Microsoft.AspNetCore.All"

The following packages are direct dependencies of Microsoft.AspNetCore.All but not of Microsoft.AspNetCore.App. Note that any dependencies of these packages that otherwise aren't dependencies of Microsoft.AspNetCore.App will now not be included implicitly, e.g. StackExchange.Redis as a dependency of Microsoft.Extensions.Caching.Redis, Microsoft.ApplicationInsights as a dependency of Microsoft.AspNetCore.ApplicationInsights.HostingStartup:

• Microsoft.Data.Sqlite
• Microsoft.Data.Sqlite.Core
• Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Sqlite
• Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Sqlite.Core
• Microsoft.Extensions.Caching.Redis
• Microsoft.AspNetCore.DataProtection.AzureStorage
• Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.AzureKeyVault
• Microsoft.AspNetCore.DataProtection.AzureKeyVault
• Microsoft.AspNetCore.Identity.Service.AzureKeyVault
• Microsoft.AspNetCore.AzureKeyVault.HostingStartup
• Microsoft.AspNetCore.ApplicationInsights.HostingStartup

When moving from Microsoft.AspNetCore.All to Microsoft.AspNetCore.App, if your application uses any APIs from the above packages, or packages brought in by those packages, you'll now need to add references to those packages in your project manually.

Discussion for this issue at aspnet/MetaPackages#255