v6 Planning

[JKamsker]

This issue will serve as the main tracking and planning document for the upcoming v6 release.

The primary motivation for this major version is the broken build pipeline and assembly signing process, which occurred after migrating the project to the litedb-org organization. As this has proven unfixable in its current state, we will take this opportunity to modernize our processes and dependencies.

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Build & Release Process Overhaul

To resolve the pipeline issues, we are making the following changes:

• Remove Assembly Signing: The signing key is lost, and the process is broken. We will remove strong-name signing from the project.
• Migrate to GitHub Actions: The build and release pipeline will be moved entirely to GitHub Actions for better integration and maintainability.

The new release workflow will be as follows:

• Dev Branch: A merge to the dev branch will automatically build and publish a new pre-release NuGet package (e.g., 6.0.0-prerelease.XXX).
• Main Branch: A merge to the main branch will automatically build and publish a new stable release on NuGet.
• GitHub Releases: All published versions will also be pushed as releases to the GitHub Releases page.

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Improvements & Changes

Already Implemented (Awaiting Release)

The following improvements and fixes have already been merged and will be part of the v6 release:

## What's Changed
* Updates to v5.0.21 by @mbdavid in https://github.com/litedb-org/LiteDB/pull/2517
* Fix #2534 by @Joy-less in https://github.com/litedb-org/LiteDB/pull/2552
* #2536 Fix race condition in bsonmapper by @JKamsker in https://github.com/litedb-org/LiteDB/pull/2538
* Fixes concurrent access issues using a concurrent dictionary by @JKamsker in https://github.com/litedb-org/LiteDB/pull/2566
* Add tests for Issue #2506 fix by @Joy-less in https://github.com/litedb-org/LiteDB/pull/2567
* Fix potential concurrency issue in GetEntityMapper caused by #2566 by @JKamsker in https://github.com/litedb-org/LiteDB/pull/2569
* Fix returning temporary mapper on concurrent access to BsonMapper by @vonzshik in https://github.com/litedb-org/LiteDB/pull/2575
* Add support for ValueTypes that consist only of Fields #2571 by @JKamsker in https://github.com/litedb-org/LiteDB/pull/2572

## New Contributors
* @Joy-less made their first contribution in https://github.com/litedb-org/LiteDB/pull/2552
* @vonzshik made their first contribution in https://github.com/litedb-org/LiteDB/pull/2575

**Full Changelog**: https://github.com/litedb-org/LiteDB/compare/v5.0.21...v5.0.22

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Planned Work (To-Do)

• Upgrade Target Frameworks: We need to update our target frameworks from the current net4.5;netstandard1.3;netstandard2.0.
  • Proposal: Multi-target netstandard2.0 (for broad compatibility) and a modern .NET version like net8.0 or net9.0. This provides modern performance benefits while maintaining support for older runtimes.
  • Note: Targeting net8.0 or net9.0 should not have performance downsides when the library is used in future projects (e.g., .NET 10), as .NET is designed for forward compatibility.

[JKamsker]

Should be included:
#2605

#2606

#2619 (comment)

Fix ACL

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TODO 2:

Contribution guidelines: Add tests:

• "Out in the wild tests": Use the lib like any sane-ish person would
• Regression test: Set up the internals of the lib so it reproduces a state which would fail without the fix

TODO 3:

#2200 (comment)

[darcome]

Will v6 let us use litedb in asp.net core? Which basically means access the db from multiple threads?

Thanks in advance!

[JKamsker]

@darcome Afaik you can already use it in asp.net core - nothing prevents you from doing that.

[E021ntox]

Is v6 compatible with the current v5 database?

[JKamsker]

Is v6 compatible with the current v5 database?

Aiming for it

[E021ntox]

Does V6 support Native AOT?

[thompson-tomo]

I would suggest rather than removing signing all together you just use a new signing key which is checked in. This is the suggestion from Microsoft to follow.

[lucafabbri]

@JKamsker I'd like to propose supporting the [NotMapped] attribute (from System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations) to exclude properties from the BSON mapping process.

This would provide a framework-agnostic way to ignore fields, allowing domain models (POCOs) to be reused with other data frameworks (like Entity Framework) without coupling them to LiteDB-specific attributes (e.g., [BsonIgnore]).

If this enhancement aligns with the project's goals, I can open a formal issue outlining specific use cases and implementation details.

[JKamsker]

@lucafabbri Happy to take contributions! Remember when creating PR's to include an extensive test suite!

[lucafabbri]

@lucafabbri Happy to take contributions! Remember when creating PR's to include an extensive test suite!

Added a PR #2722