Project.json for .net core is gone, there's xproj file. How to change settings, like target framework, per-framework dependencies, build options, pre/post build steps, etc? I don't see any tooling support for that.
Hoping they added an "empty" project that is just files, closest were some of the web projects, but even then, node projects always felt like an alien afterthought... haven't seen how they are in vs2017, guessing they brought in the ntvs stuff into mainline.
Some details of it all: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2016/11/16/announcin...
So long as they fix that (no guids, include source files with just source/.cs instead of listing each file etc) then I don't mind XML. In fact I prefer hand editing XML over json if the amount of configuration is nontrivial.