Upgrade Strategy

• Incremental upgrades: Stepwise dependency upgrades to avoid large jumps breaking builds.
• Minimal changes: Only upgrade dependencies essential for compatibility with the modern Azure SDKs.
• Risk-first: Handle EOL/challenging deps early in isolated steps.
• Necessary/Meaningful steps only: Each step MUST change code/config. NO steps for pure analysis/validation. Merge small related changes. Test: "Does this step modify project files?"
• Automation tools: Use automation tools like OpenRewrite for efficiency; always verify output. For BOM upgrades, run the scripts/upgrade_bom.py script in the parent folder when Python 3.8+ is available; if Python is not available, follow the Manual Fallback sections in bom-maven.md / bom-gradle.md instead (see Migration Guidelines).
• Successor preference: Compatible successor > Adapter pattern > Code rewrite.
• Build tool compatibility: Check Maven/Gradle version compatibility with the project's JDK. Upgrade the build tool (including wrapper) if the current version does not support the JDK.
• Temporary errors OK: Steps may pass with known errors if resolved later or pre-existing.