Shane Krueger

Consolidate on either string.Empty or ""

1

To a huge part a matter of taste, but using the literal `""` has a few advantages over using `string.Empty` (in general, not specifi to this repo): * less IL...

See: - https://github.com/dotnet/announcements/issues/331 - https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/support/policy/aspnet/2.3-packages

**Summary:** This pull request addresses package support and security vulnerabilities by updating dependencies to supported versions, adding direct references to eliminate flagged issues, and enforcing stricter build warnings related to...