Microsoft announced today that it is releasing .NET 5.0—alongside C# 9 and F# 5—as an upgrade to .NET Core 3.x.
“.NET 5.0 is the first release in our .NET unification journey,” Microsoft’s Richard Lander explains. “We built .NET 5.0 to enable a much larger group of developers to migrate their .NET Framework code and apps to .NET 5.0. We’ve also done much of the early work in 5.0 so that Xamarin developers can use the unified .NET platform when we release .NET 6.0.”
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Microsoft says that it’s already using .NET 5.0 in production and has seen major performance improvements over previous versions, which were branded as .NET Core. And having been first announced in May 2019, this day has been a long time in the making: With .NET 5.0, Microsoft begins fulfilling its vision of combining the legacy .NET Framework with the open-source .NET Core into a single platform that replaces both.
Microsoft expects to support.NET 5.0 through mid-February 2022, two months after .NET 6.0 is release. .NET 6.0, meanwhile, will be an LTS (long-term servicing) release and will be supported for three years, as was .NET Core 3.1. That said, .NET 5.0 isn’t as complete as Microsoft originally intended, and some pieces will need for .NET 6.0 before they’ll fully be transitioned.
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<blockquote><em><a href="#592039">In reply to TheJoeFin:</a></em></blockquote><p>When I develop for Linux or Android I use appropriate platform and language. This AIO want to be thing is DOA. Honestly, I am not even sure why is MS wasting time with this and who is their target. As I said before, I use JAVA and Android Studio to develop Android Apps. As far as UWP, that thing is dead. I never believed in open source. Most of the stuff on Git Hub is just garbage and it seems to me future of .NET is being open source. </p><p><br></p><p>I read the changes in updated version of C#, they are trying to completely destroy the language. The changes they have there are next to ridiculously stupid.</p>
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<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Microsoft expects to support.NET 5.0 through mid-February 2022 -> a reason not to use it. All this garbage has limited support meaning not worth spending time on it. I am staying with .NET Framework 4.8 -> Can do anything on it and as for mobile development, year right like I am going to bother with this over Android Studio.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">This is DOA. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I recently started web application and decided to go with .NET Core 3.1 but it is already out dated and replaced with another release .NET 5 which itself has limited support. I figured non of this is worth wasting my time and decided to build Web Application using trusty .NET Framework 4.8 -> which will always work! No one guarantees compatibility between .NET 3.1, .NET 5 and future .NET 6 in fact most likely there will be lot of broken stuff. That juice ain't worth the squeeze.</span></p>
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<blockquote><em><a href="#591997">In reply to TheJoeFin:</a></em></blockquote><p>No thanks. LTS according to Microsoft is not what I considered long time supported release. It is too much risk vs. .NET Framework 4.8. I did not jump into this bandwagon of constant changes and releases and having projects and platforms acting like a moving target for not a good reason.</p>