Why we're extending the NEST lifetime, and a roadmap for Elastic.Clients.Elasticsearch (v8)

Extension of the NEST Lifetime

At Elastic, we typically offer support for our Elasticsearch products for two entire major series. So when version 9 is released, everything related to version 7 hits end-of-life. But sometimes there's a reason to deviate from this policy, and we've chosen to do just that for our version 7 client for .NET: NEST.

We've been watching the downloads, and listening to user feedback, and have seen and heard that it's going to take a little longer for many of you to migrate onto the version 8 .NET client. For that reason, we'll be extending the support period of NEST right up to the end of 2025.

This means that you're absolutely fine to keep using NEST for a while longer, and you don't need to rush your migration to the version 8 client. We'll also be working on our migration docs and code examples to help you as much as we can with the transition.

Although we want to keep the lights on for longer, we are still working towards the end of life for NEST. So we won't be adding any new features to the old client, nor will we add explicit support for any new Elasticsearch APIs, or upgrade NEST to work with new versions of the .NET framework or Elasticsearch (sticking with the NEST client prevents migration to Elasticsearch 9.x). But we will monitor the library for bug fixes and security patches, and we'll make sure that NEST keeps working the way it always has.

Let's dive into the roadmap in a bit more depth...

Elastic.Clients.Elasticsearch (v8) Roadmap

In the meantime, we are working hard to not only improve the actual client, but also the documentation. A few of the most important points on our roadmap in this regard are as follows:

Improvement of the getting started guide
Providing as many code examples as possible
Publishing up-to-date auto-generated reference documentation for each version

In addition to the planned improvements to the documentation, several usability optimizations are also on the agenda.

These include, for example:

Re-implementation of the &&, || and ! operators for the logical combination of queries (also for descriptor syntax)
Simpler sorting
Extended support for the default index

Conclusion

In conclusion, Elastic's extension of NEST support until the end of 2025 provides users with ample time to transition smoothly to the new client, ensuring continued stability and assistance throughout the process.

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