Microsoft Issues .NET 7 Preview 3, .NET MAUI RC
- Paul Thurrott
- Apr 14, 2022
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Microsoft has issued some .NET-related pre-release milestones, among them .NET 7 Preview 3 and the .NET MAUI Release Candidate.
“The third preview of .NET 7 includes enhancements to observability, startup times, GodeGen, GC regions, Native Ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation, and more,” Microsoft’s Jon Douglas writes. “The bits are available for you to grab right now and start experimenting with new features like Native AOT. default GC regions, and ASP.NET Core startup time improvements. .NET 7 Preview 3 has been tested with Visual Studio 17.2 Preview 3. We recommend you use the preview channel builds if you want to try .NET 7 with Visual Studio family products.”
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Native AOT compilation seems like the big new features. It’s not new .NET. generally, but this release will bring this functionality to.NET desktop client and server code, offering a new set of capabilities that unlocks new form factors.
“[With] the availability of .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI) Release Candidate, the SDK is now API complete, ready for libraries to update and make ready for GA (general availability) compatibility,” Microsoft’s David Ortinau writes of that release. “As with other .NET release candidates, this release is covered by a ‘go live’ support policy, meaning .NET MAUI is supported by Microsoft for your production apps. To acquire .NET MAUI RC1, install or update Visual Studio 2022 Preview to version 17.2 Preview 3. In the installer confirm .NET MAUI (preview) is checked under the ‘Mobile Development with .NET workload’.”
As you may know, .NET MAUI will replace Xamarin and allow developers to create apps that run across Windows, Mac, Android, and iPhone/iPad, all from a single codebase. (Xamarin support will continue through November 2023.) .NET MAUI ships with over 40 layouts and controls optimized for building adaptive UIs across the supported platforms, and developers can optionally incorporate Blazor components or entire Blazor applications to bring web app experiences to native platforms.
For Xamarin developers, .NET MAUI every UI includes every control that ships with Xamarin.Forms, plus new controls such as BlazorWebView, Border, GraphicsView, MenuBar, Shadow, and Window. And it has other improvements, such as the ability to customize controls on a platform-by-platform basis.