This week during Build 2021, Microsoft issued .NET 6 Preview 4 and revealed that the final .NET 6 version will ship on November 9.
“We’re now about halfway through the .NET 6 release,” Microsoft’s Richard Lander revealed. “Many features are in close-to-final form and others will come soon now that the foundational building blocks are in place for the release. Preview 4 establishes a solid base for delivering a final .NET 6 build in November, with finished features and experiences. It’s also ready for real-world testing if you haven’t yet tried .NET 6 in your environment.”
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Microsoft .NET 6 will mark the completion of the software giant’s plan to unify .NET development after splitting off the open-source .NET Core from the original, proprietary .NET versions. This work began with the release of .NET 5 last year, but .NET 6 marks the culmination of this platform consolidation.
Microsoft also plans several important related releases at around the same time, including .NET Multi-platform App UI (MAUI), the replacement for Xamarin.Forms across Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS; Project Reunion, which makes Universal Windows Platform (UWP) technologies more broadly available to desktop developers targeting Windows; and Blazor desktop web apps.
.NET 6 Preview 4 is now available for download across Windows, macOS, and Linux. “Go live” builds of .NET 6 are expected this August, and Microsoft will issue the final version of .NET on November 9 during a virtual .NET Conf 2021 event.
You can learn more about .NET 6 and the various developer technologies that Microsoft is building with it via the Build 2021 session The future of modern application development with .NET.
dftf
<p>As I’m not a developer, I never really "get" how things work around .NET Framework.</p><p><br></p><p>I know it’s a language apps can be coded in, and you used to have to install it for those apps to run (such as 4.8 on Windows 7, or 2.0/3.0/3.5 has to be turned-on via "Windows Features" on Windows 10), similar to how some apps need certain editions of the Visual C++ runtimes.</p><p><br></p><p>And I get that the latest 4.x version comes as part of Windows 10 thesedays.</p><p><br></p><p>But this article talks about .NET 6, and yet what about .NET 5… does a typical user need to install the ".NET Desktop Runtime 5.0.6" package for anything? Will a future version of Windows 10 include it?</p><p><br></p><p>(On a related note, Java is also confusing thesedays: the latest stable-release is apparently "Java SE 16". Yet the latest installer for Windows is "Version 8 Update 291". So presumably that would mean if an app is coded in Java 9 or later, it wouldn’t run in the version they offer for Windows… yes?)</p>
mobabo3040
<p>I am a little curious to know about the libraries that you’re missing out on when you’re using .NET Core as opposed to .NET Framework. I recently developed a couple of large applications in .NET Core 3.1 and found it to be completely on-par with .NET Framework.</p>
mobabo3040
<p>Welcome to the new world of LTS and non-LTS software. The reason you (and, in fact, most developers themselves!) haven’t heard much about things like .NET 5 or Java 16 is because they are non-LTS software that’s only supported for a year or so. Most developers build apps with the LTS versions of these tools, which are currently .NET Core 3.1 and Java 11. And, yes, you’re right in that apps that are written for a particular version of .NET/Java won’t usually work in previous versions (and, increasingly, later versions as well). End result is that most PC have multiple copies of .NET and Java runtimes installed, causing bloat. </p>