Is project.json deprecated?

Question

Is project.json going away and web.config coming back in ASP.NET Core 1.0?

In the roadmap document, the update in '16 Q4 or '17 Q1, they mention "replacing .xproj/project.json with .csproj/MSBuild".

Does that mark the end of project.json?

Answer 1

Update: As of Visual Studio 2017 and the latest dotnet CLI, project.json is officially dead. Visual Studio will migrate projects automatically, and there is a comparison chart here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/articles/core/tools/project-json-to-csproj

project.json is indeed going away. As part of a future update to the .NET Core tooling, .xproj/project.json will be merged back into .csproj. However, the team has stated:

The new MSBuild will not have a complete list of every file, so that should reduce the size of the build file. It will still be XML, but the team is committed to making that experience better for all .NET projects. This will be an enhanced MSBuild that has all of the best parts of project.json

So, project.json will be deprecated, but some of the innovations such as auto-discovery of source files will stick around. They've also committed to improving the MSBuild experience given that many people voiced their opinion about this change.

web.config is a different thing entirely. It's used when hosting ASP.NET Core projects on IIS, but otherwise is not required.