Consider marking main assembly as AOT Compatible

[digital88]

Hello.

The main assembly ZiggyCreatures.FusionCache seems to be AOT compatible. Almost all other assemblies (except Serialization.CysharpMemoryPack and AspNetCore.OutputCaching) target netstandard2.0, so they are not AOT compatible.

What is AOT: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/deploying/native-aot/

How to mark it:

// add this line to <PropertyGroup> in src/ZiggyCreatures.FusionCache/ZiggyCreatures.FusionCache.csproj

<IsAotCompatible Condition="$([MSBuild]::IsTargetFrameworkCompatible('$(TargetFramework)', 'net6.0'))">true</IsAotCompatible>

// https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/msbuild/property-functions?view=vs-2022#TargetFramework

How to test that it is really compatible: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/deploying/trimming/prepare-libraries-for-trimming (the guide for trimming is same for AOT)

• Create new test console app, modify .csproj as:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
    <TargetFramework>net8.0</TargetFramework> <!-- may test with net9.0 too -->
    <PublishAot>true</PublishAot>
  </PropertyGroup>

  <ItemGroup>
    <ProjectReference Include="../../src/ZiggyCreatures.FusionCache/ZiggyCreatures.FusionCache.csproj" />
    <TrimmerRootAssembly Include="ZiggyCreatures.FusionCache" />
  </ItemGroup>
</Project>

• Publish test console app:

dotnet publish --ucr --self-contained

Publish should succeed and produce zero warnings.

The downside of this that if you introduce some code later that breaks AOT (examples here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/msbuild/property-functions?view=vs-2022#TargetFramework) this property will produce build warnings.

[jodydonetti]

Hi @digital88 , I looked into AOT compatibility right before releasing v1, and it seemed to be so.
I promised myself to keep looking into it but then I got sidetracked into tagging, clear and v2 in general.
Anyway: I didn't know it was possible to mark it as explicitly AOT compatible, thanks for letting me know. I'll look more into it soon, thanks!

[jodydonetti]

Hi @digital88 ,here's what I've done.

I created an AOTTester console app with this code:

using ZiggyCreatures.Caching.Fusion;

namespace AOTTester;

internal class Program
{
	static async Task Main(string[] args)
	{
		var cache = new FusionCache(new FusionCacheOptions());

		var value = await cache.GetOrSetAsync<int>("foo", async (ctx, ct) => 42);

		Console.WriteLine($"VALUE: {value}");
	}
}

The csproj looks like this:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">

	<PropertyGroup>
		<OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
		<TargetFramework>net9.0</TargetFramework>
		<ImplicitUsings>enable</ImplicitUsings>
		<Nullable>enable</Nullable>
		<InvariantGlobalization>true</InvariantGlobalization>

		<PublishAot>true</PublishAot>
		<PublishSingleFile>true</PublishSingleFile>
		<SelfContained>true</SelfContained>
		<PublishTrimmed>true</PublishTrimmed>
	</PropertyGroup>

	<ItemGroup>
		<ProjectReference Include="..\..\src\ZiggyCreatures.FusionCache\ZiggyCreatures.FusionCache.csproj" />
		<TrimmerRootAssembly Include="ZiggyCreatures.FusionCache" />
	</ItemGroup>

</Project>

Some elements may not be 100% needed since they are implicit when you specify others, but still.

Then, without even touching FusionCache csproj file, I run this:

dotnet publish -c Release --ucr --self-contained

which told me this:

Restore complete (0.4s)
  ZiggyCreatures.FusionCache net9.0 succeeded (1.7s) → C:\[...]\ZiggyCreatures.FusionCache\bin\Release\net9.0\win-x64\ZiggyCreatures.FusionCache.dll
  AOTTester succeeded (4.6s) → bin\Release\net9.0\win-x64\publish\

Build succeeded in 7.0s

No errors, no warnings, resulting in this:

Then I tried adding this to the FusionCache csproj file:

<IsAotCompatible Condition="$([MSBuild]::IsTargetFrameworkCompatible('$(TargetFramework)', 'net6.0'))">true</IsAotCompatible>

Then run again the publish: no difference, exactly the same results.

So, 2 things:

1. can confirm that everything seems to be 100% ok with FusionCache and AOT, huzzah 🥳
2. what exactly is the purpose of adding the IsAOTCompatible element in FusionCache csproj? Is it only to enable build warnings related to AOT for FusionCache itself?

One last thing. When you say:

The main assembly ZiggyCreatures.FusionCache seems to be AOT compatible. Almost all other assemblies (except Serialization.CysharpMemoryPack and AspNetCore.OutputCaching) target netstandard2.0, so they are not AOT compatible.

Do you mean that if I add multi-targeting for .NET 8/9 to those projects, they too can be used in an AOT scenario? Or would I need to do something else?

Thoughts?

Btw thanks for pointing this out and for all the info!

[jodydonetti]

Hi @digital88 , have you able to check this out and see if everything is ok?

[digital88]

Hi @digital88 , have you able to check this out and see if everything is ok?

Hello, not yet, sorry. I'm still on 1.4 version 😃 . Also not all our libraries we use in prod AOT compatible yet. I will try to make a minimal Web API project from scratch later.

[digital88]

Hi @digital88 , have you able to check this out and see if everything is ok?

Hello, not yet, sorry. I'm still on 1.4 version 😃 . Also not all our libraries we use in prod AOT compatible yet. I will try to make a minimal Web API project from scratch later.

Currently got a bug(?) in efcore which is stopper. dotnet/efcore#35945

[digital88]

Well, it works. I made a sample web API project here https://github.com/digital88/web-api-aot-fc

I tried to implement the FusionCache integration same as we use in production. I think we use a small subset of FC features, but they work in AOT 😃

Stack: in memory cache + redis distrubuted + redis backplane.

[jodydonetti]

Awesome @digital88 , thanks for the update!