Use .NET TimeProvider and deprecate IClock

[Piedone]

Is your feature request related to a problem?

From the 17th December meeting: We now have TimeProvider in .NET, which is much of the same as our IClock (and more, since it also serves other .NET types). We're now thus duplicating .NET functionality.

Also see this blog post and this one.

Describe the solution you'd like

Use TimeProvider and deprecate IClock, but keep it in a backward compatible manner.

Describe alternatives you've considered

We can just keep our parallel implementation, but it's better to align with the wider .NET ecosystem.

[hishamco]

Thanks for someone mentioning this :) I have thought about using this since .NET 8

Use TimeProvider and deprecate IClock, but keep it in a backward compatible manner.

While the next release is major, I don't think it's an issue to break this

[Piedone]

Just dropping IClock would be hugely breaking. Since it's simple interface, providing a shim will be of little effort, by allowing people to adapt gradually.

[sebastienros]

@hishamco I think this was mentioned in the meeting too, that we can keep the IClock around for users, that just wraps the new TimeProvider implementation, but OC would not use it. And then we can make it obsolete (or not). Not sure this would be removed anytime soon.

[github-actions]

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[hishamco]

Seb do you remember which meeting, I need to check the recording

[Piedone]

It's somewhere in this section: https://youtu.be/Cmu7RLimyoQ?si=Hnxv4IMw3t67b85X&t=2073