BinaryFormatter Deprecation

[Forgind]

Motivativation

Moving away from BinaryFormatter is a long running coordinated dotnet effort, all first party code should be migrated away during .NET 8 timeframe

Context

MSBuild is using BinaryFormatter in couple places as a fallback mechanism for de/serialization of more complex types (AppDomainSetup, Exceptions, ValueTypes etc.) as well as for de/serialization of custom, pluggable data (BuildEventArgs, Embedded resources)

Scope

NET 8 - need to remove or developer-condition MSBuild usages of BinaryFormatter

• GenerateResource Task (+ resgen) - Action plan needed - we can slowly deprecate this, but viable replacement needs to be thought through. Cost: Unknown, Breaking: Yes
  • [BinFmt] Identify usages of GenerateResource task #8827
• BinaryTranslator.TranslateDotNet
  • TranslateException Depart BinaryFormatter for Exceptions serialization #8786 Cost: M, Breaking: No
  • AppDomainSetup: [BinFmt] AppDomainSetup #8922 needed for OutOfProc (TaskHostConfiguration) and Separate AppDomain Tasks (NodeConfiguration)) - it seems all we need are actually 'ConfigurationBytes' (https://github.com/dotnet/msbuild/blob/main/src/Shared/TaskLoader.cs#L95-L99) - so hopefully limited cost, but needs investigation. Cost: S (TODO: detailed investigation to confirm), Breaking: No
  • ValueType and ValueTypeArray task parameter types [BinFmt] ValueType and ValueTypeArray #8923 (usage) - We should be able to de/serialize without BinaryFormatter (Blittable types just be grabing the bytes, nonblittable by marshaling) - this should be relatively easy and isolated. Cost: S, Breaking: No
  • BuildEventArgs
    • MSBuild first class citizen events - all serialized without BinaryFormatter (either via LogMessagePacketBase special handling, or via reflection discovered methods on types). No work here
    • Custom BuildEventArgs [BinFmt] Custom BuildEventArgs de/serialization #8823 - de/serialization approach from TranslateException should likely be way to go here. It's breaking though. Cost: M, Breaking: Yes
    • [BinFmt] Identify and notify internal partners relying on custom BuildEventArgs #8825 Internal partners relying on custom BuildEventArgs need to be discovered (code search within GH, AzDO accross all our build event types), notified and brought to discussion (code search). Cost: S-M
    • @Forgind already identified FxCop as relying on this. It's removed from VS, but will continue to ship as optional component via nuget (PoC: @mavasani(?) - so it might be FullFW only?)
    • [BinFmt] Facilitate proper documentation of Custom BuildEventArgs deprecation and replacement #9016
    • [BinFmt] Opt-in warn on Custom BuildEventArgs usage #9008
    • [BinFmt] Support extended messages in binary log and binary viewer #9091
    • [BinFmt] Add build-in 'ExtendedCriticalBuildMessageEventArgs' #9355
  • Tests [BinFmt] Rework/Remove unit tests using TranslateDotNet #8924
    • exceptions (just remove or move to TranslateException) Cost: XS, Breaking: No
    • ProfilerResult - most likely just remove, as this most likely uses only ITranslatable Cost: XS, Breaking: No
• [BinFmt] Investigate the need of removal from deprecated code #8822 currently 11 usages. Hopefuly this doesn't need to be touched, or at worst just conditioned, otherwise cost might be significant. Cost: Unknown, Breaking: Unknown
• Unit tests [BinFmt] Rework/Remove unit tests using BinaryFormatter #8925
  • Build.UnitTests - testing deserializing exceptions - should be moved to new eceptions de/serialization mechanism. Cost: S, Breaking: No
  • Framework.UnitTests - testing deserialization of EventArgs, AssemblyNameEx, CopyOnWriteDictionary - should be moved to new deserialization once implemented. Cost: S, Breaking: No
• StateFileBase and extensions
• GetSDKReferenceFiles task

post NET 8 #

• [BinFmt] Custom Build Event Args will lead to build warning/error by default #9300 - Cost: XS, Breaking: Yes
• Communicate the .NET Framework breaking change to internal partners. Facilitate documentation update for VS 17.? - Cost: S
• Remove serialization attributes, GetObjectData, (SerializationInfo, StreamingContext) constructors, etc. (to align with the plan - deprecation of types) Cost estimate: S-M

[KirillOsenkov]

I'm working on getting rid of BinaryTranslator.TranslateDotNet. I'm writing custom manual serialization for various args which will be more efficient.

[Forgind]

@rokonec 👆

[rokonec]

@KirillOsenkov are those new 'custom manual serialization' be still supported by ITranslator? Also, how are you planning to deal with serialization of Exceptions?

[KirillOsenkov]

I’ll send a PR in the next day or two, for now I started with ProjectEvaluationStarted and ProjectEvaluationFinished, which currently go through TranslateDotNet. I haven’t looked at the other cases yet.

[Forgind]

Should not have closed this because of BinaryTranslator.TranslateDotNet

[KirillOsenkov]

I think I've at least moved all *BuildEventArgs classes off of using TranslateDotNet. So if you place a breakpoint and run a build, it shouldn't be hit for BuildEventArgs serialization. If I missed a kind, let me know. I think TelemetryEventArgs potentially, but I don't know what that's for so I might have left it out.

But yes, there could be other types other than BuildEventArgs, so I didn't look into those.

[rolfbjarne]

I'm getting this when building a project with errors from the command line when using a recent version of .NET 8 (8.0.100-preview.5.23266.8):

 MSBUILD : error MSB4166: UNHANDLED EXCEPTIONS FROM PROCESS 90123:
 MSBUILD : error MSB4166: =====================
 MSBUILD : error MSB4166: 5/18/2023 4:56:48 PM
 MSBUILD : error MSB4166: System.NotSupportedException: BinaryFormatter serialization and deserialization are disabled within this application. See https://aka.ms/binaryformatter for more information.
 MSBUILD : error MSB4166:    at System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.BinaryFormatter.Serialize(Stream serializationStream, Object graph)
 MSBUILD : error MSB4166:    at Microsoft.Build.Execution.BuildResult.Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.ITranslatable.Translate(ITranslator translator)
 MSBUILD : error MSB4166:    at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.NodeEndpointOutOfProcBase.RunReadLoop(Stream localReadPipe, Stream localWritePipe, ConcurrentQueue`1 localPacketQueue, AutoResetEvent localPacketAvailable, AutoResetEvent localTerminatePacketPump)
 MSBUILD : error MSB4166: ===================

[rainersigwald]

@rolfbjarne very interesting! Can you share a repro? We didn't expect any .NET Core codepaths to hit this but we were clearly wrong.

[rolfbjarne]

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
	<PropertyGroup>
		<TargetFramework>net8.0</TargetFramework>
	</PropertyGroup>
	<PropertyGroup Condition="''">
	</PropertyGroup>
</Project>

$ dotnet --version
8.0.100-preview.5.23266.8

$ MSBUILDNOINPROCNODE=1 dotnet build MySimpleApp.csproj
MSBuild version 17.7.0-preview-23260-01+7f4bef8b4 for .NET
/Users/rolf/work/maccore/mono-master/xamarin-macios/tests/dotnet/MySimpleApp/macOS/MySimpleApp.csproj(6,17): error MSB4113: Specified condition "''" evaluates to "" instead of a boolean.
MSBUILD : error MSB4166: Child node "2" exited prematurely. Shutting down. Diagnostic information may be found in files in "/var/folders/43/h027tm1n101cdrq2_b6n9n2m0000gn/T/MSBuildTemprolf/" and will be named MSBuild_*.failure.txt. This location can be changed by setting the MSBUILDDEBUGPATH environment variable to a different directory.
MSBUILD : error MSB4166: /var/folders/43/h027tm1n101cdrq2_b6n9n2m0000gn/T/MSBuildTemprolf/MSBuild_pid-5527_75432f69f6fa4357a1cb60532f101677.failure.txt:
MSBUILD : error MSB4166: UNHANDLED EXCEPTIONS FROM PROCESS 5527:
MSBUILD : error MSB4166: =====================
MSBUILD : error MSB4166: 5/18/2023 6:00:21 PM
MSBUILD : error MSB4166: System.NotSupportedException: BinaryFormatter serialization and deserialization are disabled within this application. See https://aka.ms/binaryformatter for more information.
MSBUILD : error MSB4166:    at System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.BinaryFormatter.Serialize(Stream serializationStream, Object graph)
MSBUILD : error MSB4166:    at Microsoft.Build.Execution.BuildResult.Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.ITranslatable.Translate(ITranslator translator)
MSBUILD : error MSB4166:    at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.NodeEndpointOutOfProcBase.RunReadLoop(Stream localReadPipe, Stream localWritePipe, ConcurrentQueue`1 localPacketQueue, AutoResetEvent localPacketAvailable, AutoResetEvent localTerminatePacketPump)
MSBUILD : error MSB4166: ===================
MSBUILD : error MSB4166:
MSBUILD : error MSB4166:

Build FAILED.

Note that when I ran into this originally, I didn't have MSBUILDNOINPROCNODE set, so that's not necessary for the issue to trigger (although I'm not sure how to force it without the env variable)