Upgrade Version 7 to 8

This document focuses on changes that are affecting general endpoint configuration and message handlers. For more upgrade guides, see the following additional guides:

• Changes for downstream implementations like custom/community transports, persistence, message serializers
• Changes related to the pipeline
• Changes to framework requirements

Removed support for .NET Standard

.NET Standard support was removed in NServiceBus version 8. Instead, NServiceBus targets .NET Framework 4.7.2 and .NET 6 directly (read more about the supported frameworks and platforms). While this should have no direct impact on endpoint executables, shared message contract assemblies that target .NET Standard might need to be adjusted. This does not affect message contract assemblies which use unobtrusive mode aerd do not reference the NServiceBus assembly. These message contracts can continue to target .NET Standard. Refer to the updating message contracts page for more details.

Transport configuration

NServiceBus version 8 comes with a new transport configuration API. Instead of the generic-based UseTransport<TTransport> method, create an instance of the transport's configuration class and pass it to the the UseTransport method. For example, instead of:

var transport = endpointConfiguration.UseTransport<MyTransport>();
transport.Transactions(TransportTransactionMode.ReceiveOnly);

var routing = t.Routing();
routing.RouteToEndpoint(typeof(MyMessage), "DestinationEndpoint");

Use:

var transport = new MyTransport{
    TransportTransactionMode = TransportTransactionMode.ReceiveOnly
};

var routing = endpointConfiguration.UseTransport(transport);
routing.RouteToEndpoint(typeof(MyMessage), "DestinationEndpoint");

See the transport upgrade guide for further details.

Dependency injection

NServiceBus no longer provides adapters for external dependency injection containers. Instead, NServiceBus version 8 directly provides the ability to use any container that conforms to the Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection container abstraction. Visit the dedicated dependency injection changes section of the upgrade guide for further information.

Support for external logging providers

Support for external logging providers is no longer provided by NServiceBus adapters for each logging framework. Instead, the NServiceBus.Extensions.Logging package provides the ability to use any logging provider that conforms to the Microsoft.Extensions.Logging abstraction.

The following provider packages will no longer be provided:

• Common.Logging
• Log4net
• NLog

CancellationToken support

NServiceBus version 8 supports cooperative cancellation using CancellationToken parameters. Where appropriate, optional CancellationToken parameters have been added to public methods. This includes the abstract classes and interfaces required to implement a message transport or persistence library, and other extension points like IDataBus, FeatureStartupTask, and INeedToInstallSomething. Implementers can be updated by adding an optional CancellationToken parameter to the end of method signatures. The change also includes callbacks that customize the behavior of NServiceBus:

• when a critical error is encountered
• when a message is retried
• when a message is moved to the error queue
• when a message is processed

Shutdown behavior

In all versions of NServiceBus, endpoint.Stop() immediately stops receiving new messages but waits for a period of time for currently running message handlers to complete.

In NServiceBus version 7 and below, the MSMQ, Azure Service Bus, RabbitMQ, Azure Storage Queues, and SQL transports allow handlers up to 30 seconds to complete before forcing an endpoint shutdown. In NServiceBus version 8, all transports block shutdown until all handlers complete or the transport transaction times out.

The CancellationToken available on the IMessageHandlerContext in NServiceBus version 8 is triggered when the host forces shutdown. For example, by default, the .NET Generic Host signals the cancellation token after 5 seconds.

However, if handlers do not observe the cancellation token, they will be allowed to complete before the endpoints shuts down. This means that if, for example, a handler calls Task.Delay(TimeSpan.Infinite), the endpoint will never shut down.

Therefore, it is recommended that all message handlers observe the cancellation token to enable forced shutdown when required.

New gateway persistence API

The NServiceBus gateway has been moved to a separate NServiceBus.Gateway package and all gateway public APIs in NServiceBus are obsolete and will produce the following warning:

Gateway persistence has been moved to the NServiceBus.Gateway dedicated package. Will be treated as an error from version 8.0.0. Will be removed in version 9.0.0.

How to upgrade

• Install the desired gateway persistence package. Supported packages are:
  • NServiceBus.Gateway.Sql
  • NServiceBus.Gateway.RavenDB
• Configure the gateway API by invoking the endpointConfiguration.Gateway(...) method, passing as an argument the selected storage configuration instance:
  • Documentation for NServiceBus.Gateway.Sql
  • Documentation for NServiceBus.Gateway.RavenDB

Error notification events

In NServiceBus version 7.2, error notification events for MessageSentToErrorQueue, MessageHasFailedAnImmediateRetryAttempt, and MessageHasBeenSentToDelayedRetries using .NET events were deprecated in favor of Task-based callbacks. Starting in NServiceBus version 8, the event-based notifications will throw an error.

Error notifications can be set with the Task-based callbacks through the recoverability settings:

var recoverability = endpointConfiguration.Recoverability();

recoverability.Immediate(settings => settings.OnMessageBeingRetried((retry, ct) =>
{
    log.Info($"Message {retry.MessageId} will be retried immediately.");
    return Task.CompletedTask;
}));

recoverability.Delayed(settings => settings.OnMessageBeingRetried((retry, ct) =>
{
    log.Info($@"Message {retry.MessageId} will be retried after a delay.");
    return Task.CompletedTask;
}));

recoverability.Failed(settings => settings.OnMessageSentToErrorQueue((failed, ct) =>
{
    log.Fatal($@"Message {failed.MessageId} will be sent to the error queue.");
    return Task.CompletedTask;
}));

Disabling subscriptions

In previous versions, users sometimes disabled the MessageDrivenSubscriptions feature to remove the need for a subscription storage on endpoints that do not publish events, which could cause other unintended consequences.

While NServiceBus still supports message-driven subscriptions for transports that do not have native publish/subscribe capabilities, the MessageDrivenSubscriptions feature itself has been deprecated.

To disable publishing on an endpoint, the declarative API should be used instead:

var transportConfiguration = endpointConfiguration.UseTransport(new MyTransport());
transportConfiguration.DisablePublishing();

Change to license file locations

NServiceBus version 8 will no longer attempt to load the license file from the appSettings section of an app.config or web.config file, in order to create better alignment between .NET Framework 4.x and .NET Core.

In NServiceBus version 7 and below, the license path can be loaded from the NServiceBus/LicensePath app setting, or the license text itself can be loaded from the NServiceBus/License app setting.

Starting in NServiceBus version 8, one of the other methods of providing a license must be used instead.

Support for message forwarding

Starting with version 8, NServiceBus no longer natively supports forwarding a copy of every message processed by an endpoint. Instead, create a custom behavior to forward a copy of every processed message as described in the message forwarding sample.

NServiceBus Host

The NServiceBus.Host package is deprecated. See the NServiceBus Host upgrade guide for details and alternatives.

NServiceBus Azure Host

The NServiceBus.Hosting.Azure and NServiceBus.Hosting.Azure.HostProcess are deprecated.See the NServiceBus Azure Host upgrade guide for details and alternatives.

DateTimeOffset instead of DateTime

Usage of DateTime can result in numerous issues caused by misalignment of time zone offsets, which can lead to time calculation errors. Although a DateTime.Kind property exists, it is often ignored during DateTime math and it is up to the user to ensure values are aligned in their offset. The DateTimeOffset type fixes this. It does not contain any time zone information, only an offset, which is sufficient to get the time calculations right.

> These uses for DateTimeOffset values are much more common than those for DateTime values. As a result, DateTimeOffset should be considered the default date and time type for application development."

In NServiceBus version 8, all APIs have been migrated from DateTime to DateTimeOffset.

NServiceBus Scheduler

In NServiceBus version 8, the Scheduler API has been deprecated in favor of options like sagas and production-grade schedulers such as Hangfire, Quartz, and FluentScheduler.

It is recommended to create a .NET Timer with the same interval as the scheduled task and use IMessageSession.SendLocal to send a message to process. Adopting a message processing approach has the benefit of using recoverability and a transactional context. If these benefits are not needed then do not send a message and directly invoke logic from the timer instead.

See the scheduling with .NET Timers sample for more details.

Meaningful exceptions when stopped

NServiceBus version 8 throws an InvalidOperationException when invoking message operations on IMessageSession when the endpoint instance is stopping or stopped to indicate that the instance can no longer be used.

Non-durable messaging

Support for non-durable messaging has been moved to the transports that can support it, which at the time of the NServiceBus version 8 release is only the RabbitMQ transport. When using another transport, the use of [Express] or message conventions to request non-durable delivery can safely be removed.

RabbitMQ users should use the new options.UseNonPersistentDeliveryMode() API provided by NServiceBus.RabbitMQ Version 7

Non-durable persistence

Support for non-durable persistence (previously known as InMemoryPersistence) has been removed from the NServiceBus package to a separate NServiceBus.Persistence.NonDurable package. To continue using it, add a reference to the new package and update the configuration code as follows:

endpointConfiguration.UsePersistence<NonDurablePersistence>();

Timeout manager removed

All supported transports now support native delayed delivery, so the timeout manager is no longer necessary. Any calls to EndpointConfiguration.TimeoutManager() and EndpointConfiguration.UseExternalTimeoutManager() can safely be removed.

Data migration

Using a transport that previously relied on the timeout manager may require a migration of existing timeouts. Use the timeouts migration tool to detect and migrate timeouts as needed.

The following transports might need migration:

• RabbitMQ
• Azure Storage Queues
• SQL Transport
• SQS
• MSMQ

Outbox configuration

NServiceBus version 8 requires the transport transaction mode to be set explicitly to ReceiveOnly when using the outbox feature:

var transport = endpointConfiguration.UseTransport<MyTransport>();

transport.TransportTransactionMode = TransportTransactionMode.ReceiveOnly;

endpointConfiguration.EnableOutbox();

AbortReceiveOperation

ITransportReceiveContext.AbortReceiveOperation has been deprecated in favor of throwing an OperationCanceledException. This will preserve the NServiceBus version 7 behavior of immediately retrying the message without invoking recoverability.

Renamed extension method types

The following static extension method types have been renamed:

All references to the old types must be changed to the new types. Note that these types are not usually referenced directly, since they contain only extension methods.

Gateway in-memory deduplication

The InMemoryDeduplicationConfiguration type within the NServiceBus.Gateway package has been renamed to NonDurableDeduplicationConfiguration.

Dependency on System.Memory package for .NET Framework

Memory allocations for incoming and outgoing messages bodies are reduced by using the low allocation memory types via the System.Memory namespace. These type are available on .NET Framework via the System.Memory package. The NServiceBus build that targets .NET Framework has this dependency added.

Implicit global using directives

NServiceBus 8 supports the implicit global using directives feature introduced in the .NET 6 SDK. When <ImplicitUsings>enable</ImplicitUsings> has been set in the project file, all files in the project will have an implicit using NServiceBus; added to them. In the event that this introduces a conflict between two identically named types in referenced namespaces, the ambiguity must be resolved manually.

To disable the feature of implicitly adding the NServiceBus namespace while still keeping ImplicitUsings enabled, add the following to the project file:

<ItemGroup>
  <Using Remove="NServiceBus" />
</ItemGroup>

Analyzers and packages.config

The Roslyn analyzers included with NServiceBus 8 no longer provide support for projects that use a packages.config file. To receive the benefit of Roslyn analyzers such as the warning on an unawaited Task or the saga analyzers, a project file must use PackageReference elements.

Saga analyzers

NServiceBus version 8 elevates several saga-related Roslyn analyzers introduced in NServiceBus version 7.7 from Warning to Error, which will prevent a successful build when using default analyzer settings. These diagnostics indicate a serious issue that should be fixed. However, all Roslyn analyzer diagnostics can be suppressed if necessary.

• NSB0003 Non-mapping expression used in ConfigureHowToFindSaga method: No other statements besides mapping expressions using the provided mapper argument are allowed.
• NSB0006 Message that starts the saga does not have a message mapping: Without a mapping expression, the correct saga data cannot be found for an incoming message. A code fix is available that will add a new mapping to the ConfigureHowToFindSaga method. If using a custom saga finder, the error can be suppressed.
• NSB0007 Saga data property is not writeable: Properties on saga data classes must have public setters so they can be loaded properly.
• NSB0009 A saga cannot use the Id property for a Correlation ID: The Id property is reserved for use by the saga. Because some saga storage options are case insensitive, ID, id, and iD are also not allowed as properties for a Correlation ID.
• NSB0015 Saga should not implement IHandleSagaNotFound: The IHandleSagaNotFound extension point allows handling any message where saga data cannot be loaded. Implementing this interface on a saga gives the wrong impression that it only handles sagas not found for that saga, which is incorrect. Instead, implement the saga not found logic on a separate class.

OpenTelemetry

NServiceBus 8 includes built-in OpenTelemetry support for tracing and metrics. To enable OpenTelemetry instrumentation in NServiceBus, refer to the NServiceBus OpenTelemetry documentation.

The tracing functionality is compatible with the NServiceBus.Extensions.Diagnostics community package available for NServiceBus version 7. When upgrading endpoints from version 7, switch to the built-in OpenTelemetry support following these steps:

1. Remove references to the NServiceBus.Extensions.Diagnostics and NServiceBus.Extensions.Diagnostics.OpenTelemetry packages.
2. Enable NServiceBus OpenTelemetry support using the endpointConfiguration.EnableOpenTelemetry() API.
3. Change the source name in the AddSource(...) method of the TracerProviderBuilder and MeterProviderBuilder APIs from "NServiceBus.Extensions.Diagnostics" to "NServiceBus.Core".

The spans and metrics captured by NServiceBus can differ from the community package.

See the OpenTelemetry samples for more guidance on integrating with 3rd party OpenTelemetry tooling.

Raw messaging

NServiceBus version 8 supports raw messaging. Raw messaging allows the transport infrastructure to be used directly without the need to spin up a full NServiceBus endpoint. Raw messaging is useful when integrating with third-party systems, building message gateways or bridges, or performing other low-level sending and receiving tasks.