One problem remained: the docking system's theme. In the old version, DockContainerItem used a custom paint handler that no longer existed. The form would render—but with weird black flickering on the tabs.
He added a new SuperTabControl to a test form. Set ThemeStyle = "Office2019Colorful" . The flicker vanished.
He slammed his desk. Then he noticed the IntelliSense suggestion in VS2022: "RibbonBar is obsolete. Use 'RibbonControl' from DevComponents.DotNetBar.Ribbon." The new IDE had actually scanned his code and offered a quick action. Marcus hit and selected "Replace with modern equivalent" .
He leaned back. The build server kicked off in VS2022's new Git integration. Tests passed.
Marcus opened the DotNetBar , a standalone tool that still worked perfectly. He exported the old theme as XML, then imported it into the new Visual Studio 2022 toolbox.
"This suite was written when Windows Vista was cool," Marcus muttered.
Marcus smiled. He didn't tell them. Some magic should remain invisible.
He took a sip of his cold coffee. Didn't even mind.
Visual Studio 2022 refactored 50 files in five seconds.
Restoring packages for LegacyERP.csproj... Updating 'DotNetBar' from 12.1.0 to 14.3.0... Applying new API mappings... When it finished, he rebuilt the solution.
The legacy ERP would live another decade. And Marcus? He finally closed his laptop at 5:01 PM. The next morning, QA reported that the login button was now a perfect Office 365 gradient. They called it "the most professional-looking version ever." No one knew it was a 12-year-old third-party suite running on .NET 6.
The progress bar crawled. He watched the output window: