Darker V5

[iancooper]

It has been a while since we gave Darker a good overhaul, and it feels like now that we are approaching RC1 of V10 we could think about what that might look like. Some thoughts:

• OTel support for queries (implies QueryContext, similar to RequestContext in Brighter)
• Drop SimpleInjector and LightInjector; add in-memory test variants as per Brighter
• Rename and split AspNetCore package to Extensions.DependencyInjection to match Brighter
• Add support for Hybrid Cache and Fusion Cache (see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/performance/caching/hybrid?view=aspnetcore-9.0 and https://github.com/ZiggyCreatures/FusionCache)

[SebastianRobbins]

I would be happy to put my hand up to assist with these updates.

Another initial idea would be to replace Newtonsoft.Json with System.Text.Json?

[iancooper]

@SebastianRobbins Yes, that would be good. I can't believe that we have not done that here yet.

[iancooper]

This is the best strategy, @SebastianRobbins. You can pick an issue, comment to clarify the request you need, and raise a PR. You can ask here, too, but we tend to work on individual issues.

[iancooper]

I am re-opening this for a conversation in 2026.

We get expressions of intent, but everyone gets busy enough that we lack progress. However, I suspect that these may be useful to write up as issues for agents. I had a discussion with @ darrenschwarz recently about making this repository better for agents. We certainly move some of the work from Brighter on agent instructions and backfill ADRs. Then we could see if we could use agents to tackle some of these items.