PostSharp 2023.0: Requirements and Compatibility

You can use PostSharp to build applications that target a wide range of target devices. This article lists the requirements for development, build and end-user devices.

Supported programming languages

This version of PostSharp supports the following languages:

• C# 11.0 or earlier,

• VB 16.9 or earlier.

PostSharp only supports the compilers that ship with the supported versions of Visual Studio, .NET Core SDK, or .NET SDK. Other compiler versions, especially pre-Roslyn ones, are no longer supported.

You may use PostSharp with an unsupported language version at your own risks by setting the PostSharpSkipLanguageVersionValidation MSBuild property to True. There are two risks in doing that: inconsistent or erroneous behavior of the current version of PostSharp, and breaking changes in the future version of PostSharp that will support this language version.

Requirements on development workstations and build servers

This section lists the supported platforms, and most importantly platform versions, on which PostSharp is intended to run.

The following software components need to be installed before PostSharp can be used:

• Any of the following versions of Microsoft Visual Studio:

• Visual Studio 2019 (16.11).

• Visual Studio 2022 (17.4).

  The debugging experience may be inconsistent with other IDEs than Visual Studio or when PostSharp Tools for Visual Studio are not installed.

• .NET Framework 4.7.2 or later.

• Any of the following operating systems:

• Windows 10, Windows 11: any version in mainstream Microsoft support, except LTSB and S editions.

• On build agents only: Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2022, Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Alpine 3.x (currently supported version).

• Optionally, one of the following versions of .NET SDK:

• .NET Core SDK 3.1 (build 3.1.100 or later).

• .NET SDK 6.0 (build 6.0.100 or later).

• .NET SDK 7.0 (build 7.0.100 or later).

Requirements on end-user devices

The following table displays the versions of the target frameworks that are supported by the current release of PostSharp and its components.

Compatibility with Xamarin

Xamarin is supported as a runtime platform only via .NET Standard. You can add supported PostSharp packages to your .NET Standard libraries and then reference these libraries in your Xamarin application project. Adding PostSharp directly to a Xamarin application project is not supported.

Xamarin applications use a linker that is executed during build to discard the unused code and reduce the size of the application. To prevent the linker from removing the code required by PostSharp you need to add a custom linker configuration to your project. See Compatibility with Xamarin for more details.

Compatibility with Blazor

Blazor is supported as a runtime platform only via .NET Standard. You can add supported PostSharp packages to your .NET Standard libraries and then reference these libraries in your Blazor application project. Adding PostSharp directly to a Blazor application project is not supported.

Blazor applications use a linker that is executed during build to discard the unused code and reduce the size of the application. To prevent the linker from removing the code required by PostSharp you need to add a custom linker configuration to your project. See Compatibility with Blazor for more details.

To debug Blazor applications, PostSharpDebuggerExtensionsMode MSBuild property should be set to Disabled for all referenced projects using PostSharp, otherwise the debugger may fail to load debugging symbols properly. See Compatibility with Blazor for more details.

Compatibility with ASP.NET 1.0 - 4.8

There are two ways to develop web applications using Microsoft .NET:

• **ASP.NET Application projects ** are very similar to other projects; they need to be built before they can be executed. Since they are built using MSBuild, you can use PostSharp as with any other kind of project.

• **ASP.NET Site projects ** are very specific: there is no MSBuild project file (a site is actually a directory), and these projects must not be built. ASP.NET Site projects are not supported.

Compatibility with Microsoft Code Analysis

By default, PostSharp reconfigures the build process so that Code Analysis is executed on the assemblies as they were before being enhanced by PostSharp. If you are using Code Analysis as an integrated part of Visual, no change of configuration is required.

You can request the Code Analysis to execute on the output of PostSharp by setting the ExecuteCodeAnalysisOnPostSharpOutput MSBuild property to True. For more information, see Configuring Projects Using MSBuild.

Compatibility with Microsoft Code Contracts

PostSharp configures the build process so that Microsoft Code Contracts is executed before PostSharp. Additionally, Microsoft Code Contracts' static analyzer will be executed synchronously (instead of asynchronously without PostSharp), which will significantly impact the build performance.

Compatibility with Obfuscators

PostSharp generates assemblies that are theoretically compatible with all obfuscators.

Compatibility with ARM platforms

Developing on ARM platforms (e.g. Mac M1, Raspberry Pi) is not supported.

Targeting ARM platforms is not supported. Target Any-CPU instead.

Known Incompatibilities

PostSharp is not compatible with the following products or features: