I first referenced this here back in early 2024 that I was considering dropping .netstandard and at the time moving to .net6 only. The Avalonia team has also announced that they are planning to drop support within the 12.x timeframe and move to .net 6 and the reception on that announcement has generally been positive.

As a result, FluentAvalonia will also be dropping .netstandard support. HOWEVER, I will be dropping it sooner than Avalonia. Beginning with the 2.5 release, FluentAvalonia will move to a single target framework of .net8.

Why the change?

1. .netstandard needs to go...its old
2. FA is a community based, community served project with no enterprise paying users (or profit from anyone, really) and therefore there is no financial incentive to hold onto the outdated frameworks, unlike Avalonia. Community projects are generally more flexible too and I imagine many of you are probably on 8, 9, or even the 10 previews.
3. Avalonia is considering .net6, why .net8? .net6 is also quite old and out of support at this point and .net8 is much newer. I was also considering .net7 but might as well jump to 8. Again, see # 2

As I said above this will happen with the 2.5 package version, which is still a bit off in the future (probably this summer some time) so if you're still on an older version of .net you have a bit of time. 2.4 is now in preview and I have a couple other things to get into that version before its released.