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  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Microsoft releases first preview of .NET 7

(2022/02/21)


Microsoft says the [1]first preview of .NET 7 is on its way.

This version of the development framework is aimed at containers and cloud-native applications. Microsoft plans to explore building containers directly via MSBuild as well as bolting on more telemetry and making its containers more nimble.

The platform formerly known as Xamarin Forms, now called .NET MAUI (Multi-platform App UI), will also be included once it has gone to General Availability for .NET 6 ( [2]Preview 13 hit last week ).

[3]

However, the company also warned: "We also know that each of the .NET app models (ASP.NET, WinForms, WPF, etc.) have their own unique challenges with modernization and may be lacking functionality that you need as a developer or support in the platform itself."

[4]

[5]

The release won't be a Long Term Support (LTS) edition so will only be supported for 18 months past its expected November release date – likely May 2024. .NET 6 will keep on ticking for a full three years, meaning support will end in November 2024.

[6]20 years of .NET: Reflecting on Microsoft's not-Java

[7]Replaced several times but still live and kicking: Windows Forms updated for .NET 6.0

[8]Red Hat 8.5 released with SQL Server and .NET 6 ... this is Linux, right?

[9]Microsoft previews Visual Studio 2022 for Mac, but why bother when VS Code runs just fine on Apple hardware?

The first preview is understandably a little light on features compared to Microsoft's ambitions for the coming months. Among the changes in preview 1 are annotation of nullability for more Microsoft.Extensions libraries, ARM64 improvements, and tweaks to the Hot Reload functionality aimed at improving the quality of developers' lives.

The Hot Reload feature caused controversy when [10]Microsoft removed it from open-source .NET 6 in October last year, saying the "functionality" would be available "only through Visual Studio 2022."

The team, however, quickly backtracked following an outcry from devs. .NET's director of program management, Scott Hunter, [11]said at the time : "First and foremost, we want to apologize. We made a mistake in executing on our decision and took longer than expected to respond back to the community. We have approved the pull request to re-enable this code path and it will be in the GA build of the .NET 6 SDK."

[12]

At present, migrating from .NET 6 should be relatively painless, and there are few [13]breaking changes at this point (although developers might want to hang fire for the next LTS incarnation unless something irresistible turns up in version 7).

While .NET 7 is cross-platform, Microsoft has tested the code with Visual Studio 17.2 Preview 1 for Windows. Support for the preview in Visual Studio for Mac still has the "coming soon" tag. ®

Get our [14]Tech Resources



[1] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/announcing-net-7-preview-1/

[2] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/announcing-net-maui-preview-13/

[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YhPFNk9Fzo1B-HbsDakADAAAAEs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YhPFNk9Fzo1B-HbsDakADAAAAEs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YhPFNk9Fzo1B-HbsDakADAAAAEs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[6] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/15/20_years_of_dotnet/

[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/22/windows_forms_dotnet_60/

[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/11/red_hat_8_5/

[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/09/visual_studio_2022_mac_preview/

[10] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/22/microsoft_net_hot_reload_visual_studio/

[11] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/net-hot-reload-support-via-cli/

[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YhPFNk9Fzo1B-HbsDakADAAAAEs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[13] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/dotnet/core/compatibility/7.0

[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/



"Modernization" - that word does not mean what they think it means

bombastic bob

Every time Micros~1 makes reference to "modern", we end up with:

a) Flatter-looking UI

b) removed customizations

c) Lipstick on the boar (and not even the oinky end)

d) bloat, cruft, and broken

e) less efficient

f) "No, really, we actually fixed it this time"

g) tracking, spying, unnecessary cloudiness, adware, and fewer features.

and so on

I fear what "modernization" they are referring to THIS time...

It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.
-- Steven Wright