Initial draft of NLog v6 goals

_posts/2024-10-01-nlog-6-0-goals.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: NLog 6.0 goals
+---
+
+NLog v6.0 has the following goals:
+
+- Support Ahead-of-Time (AOT) builds without warnings
+- Support Nullable references
+- Remove old target platforms `NetStandard1.3` + `NetStandard1.5`
+- Cleanup interfaces for `Logger` / `ILogger` to remove unnecessary boxing optimizations from .NET v1
+- Remove `System.Text.RegularExpressions` dependency since a heavy dependency for AOT
+  - Need to implement a minimal syntax-support for NLog Logging Rules. Ex. `?` and `*`
+- Remove `System.Xml` dependency since a heavy dependency for AOT
+  - Need to implement a minimal XML reader to continue loading `NLog.config` XML files
+- Extract NLog.Targets.WebServiceTarget to its own nuget-package
+- Extract NLog.Targets.NetworkTarget to its own nuget-package
+- Extract NLog.Targets.MailTarget to its own nuget-package
+- Extract NLog.Targets.FileTarget to its own nuget-package NLog.Targets.ConcurrentFileTarget
+  - NLog will instead have a simple FileTarget without ConcurrentWrites-support but only KeepFileOpen = false
+
+The overall goal for NLog v6.0 is to continue being a fully working logging-library in a single nuget-package.
+The NLog-package will out of the box only handle file- and console-output, which will probably cover 90 pct.
+of the use cases. When needing other output targets or formats, then additional nuget-packages must be included.
+
+The planned interface cleanup for `Logger` / `ILogger` will probably give a lot of headache,
+as it will require all dependencies to be upgraded before upgrading the main-application.
+Where NLog v5 was mostly an update of default values for the main-application to handle,
+then the upgrade to NLog v6 will affect the entire dependency- / project-tree.
+
+Another goal is that all existing nuget-packages that depends on NLog v4, should continue to function with NLog v6.
+This means NLog v6 will continue to support obsolete API-methods, that are relevant for custom NLog targets.
+
+.NET8 already have great support for AOT, but many Microsoft teams are still working on updating
+their nuget-packages to support AOT. Believe the goal for .NET9 is to ensure even more nuget-packages
+will fully support AOT, to allow more ASP.NET or MAUI applications to start using AOT.
+NLog should not become a blocker, when wanting to try out AOT builds.
+
+This means NLog v5 will now go into maintenance mode (together with NLog v4), and focus
+will now be on getting NLog v6 preview build ready. If having suggestions for the future direction
+of the [NLog v6 milestone](https://github.com/NLog/NLog/milestone/29) then [comments are wellcome](https://github.com/NLog/NLog/issues/4931).