Modernizing the GHOSTS Client 👻

[sei-dupdyke]

Based on the discussion in #450 I started working on a modern version of the client (currently .NET 9.0). I'm doing this because I would prefer to just develop in a modern env instead of keeping around older versions of the dotnet framework (4.x+) on a windows vm. I hope that opens the project to others contributing as well.

I will keep around the classic client (with hopefully only minimal support at some point in the future) for those of you that are still using ghosts in older OS'es (which for training and exercise, is sometimes very necessary!). If you have strong feelings on this topic, let's discuss here.

Currently, in the v8 branch, you will see a lot of changes:

• api bump to .net 9
• classic client moved to ghosts.client.windows
• linux client moved to ghosts.client.universal (because we can cross-compile this for linux, windows, and mac — and do OS switching for windows-only sorts of functions)
• I deleted some older cruft (migrations and such) that I don't think anyone is using anymore.

Now in the universal client, I'm cleaning up a lot of junk:

• dynamically getting the handler from the timeline, instead of having a big switch statement
• (which requires) making a standard IHandler and baseclass instantiation - we can continue to simplify this, I am trying to make baby steps to not break anything major
• .net tasks instead of threads
• moving to websockets as the preferred comms between client and api, as I assume more and more activity needs to be real-time.

There is a lot of work in the handlers to get them all working, but I think it is manageable.

Anything else anyone needs, let's discuss here please!

Also, sorry I have been MIA here for a while, so busy 😩

[sei-dupdyke]

As an early beta - it works!

dotnet publish -c Release -r <RID> --self-contained true

Example Targets

OS/Arch RID
Windows x64 win-x64
Linux x64 linux-x64
Linux ARM64 linux-arm64
macOS x64 osx-x64
macOS ARM64 (M1+) osx-arm64

[nblair2]

@sei-dupdyke - I am eagerly following along. Happy to provide some third-party testing once you think this is ready. For now I have 2 questions:

• what is the difference between the capitalized vs. lowercase names (i.e. ghosts.client.universal and Ghosts.Client.Universal) ? eventually going to consolidate to one?
• are you expecting the universal client to work on both linux and Windows right now? If so I can build and start testing.

[sei-dupdyke]

Hi

• .NET standard is pascal case, so Ghosts.Client.Universal is correct. I confused this way back when some development was on Windows and some on Mac/Linux.
• Universal client should work on both OS. Some handlers will have OS flags where they only work on one or the other, and other handlers where the implementation code will be different (thinking mouse clicks for example).