.NET
Developer(s).NET Foundation and the open-source community
Initial releaseJune 27, 2016; 7 years ago (2016-06-27)
Stable release
8.0.4[1] Edit this on Wikidata / 9 April 2024; 27 days ago (9 April 2024)
Preview release
8.0.0-preview.5[2] Edit this on Wikidata / 13 June 2023; 10 months ago (13 June 2023)
Repository
Written inC++, C#
Operating systemcross-platform: Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, iOS
PlatformIA-32, x86-64, ARM
Predecessor.NET Framework
TypeSoftware framework
LicenseMIT[3]
Websitedotnet.microsoft.com

The .NET platform (pronounced as "dot net") is a free and open-source, managed computer software framework for Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems.[4] The project is mainly developed by Microsoft employees by way of the .NET Foundation and is released under an MIT License.[3]

History

See also: C Sharp (programming language) § History, and .NET Framework § History

In the late 1990s, Microsoft began developing a managed code runtime and programming language (C#) which it billed together as part of the ".NET platform", with the core runtime and software libraries comprising the .NET Framework.

At the heart of the .NET Platform is the .NET Framework, a high-productivity, multilanguage development and execution environment for building and running Web services with important features such as cross-language inheritance and debugging.[5]

Soon after the announcement of the C# language at the Professional Developers Conference in 2000 and previews of its software became available, Microsoft began a standardization effort through ECMA for what it dubbed the Common Language Infrastructure. The company continued development and support of its own implementation as proprietary, closed source software in the meantime.

On November 12, 2014, Microsoft introduced .NET Core—an open-source, cross-platform[6] successor[7] to .NET Framework—and released source code for the .NET Core CoreCLR implementation, source for the "entire [...] library stack" for .NET Core,[8] and announced the adoption of a conventional ("bazaar"-like) open-source development model under the stewardship of the .NET Foundation. Miguel de Icaza describes .NET Core as a "redesigned version of .NET that is based on the simplified version of the class libraries",[9] and Microsoft's Immo Landwerth explained that .NET Core would be "the foundation of all future .NET platforms". At the time of the announcement, the initial release of the .NET Core project had been seeded with a subset of the libraries' source code and coincided with the relicensing of Microsoft's existing .NET reference source away from the restrictions of the Ms-RSL. Landwerth acknowledged the disadvantages of the formerly selected shared license, explaining that it made codename Rotor "a non-starter" as a community-developed open source project because it did not meet the criteria of an Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved license.[10][11][12]

.NET Core 1.0 was released on June 27, 2016,[13] along with Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Update 3, which enables .NET Core development.[14] .NET Core 1.0.4 and .NET Core 1.1.1 were released along with .NET Core Tools 1.0 and Visual Studio 2017 on March 7, 2017.[15]

.NET Core 2.0 was released on August 14, 2017, along with Visual Studio 2017 15.3, ASP.NET Core 2.0, and Entity Framework Core 2.0.[16] .NET Core 2.1 was released on May 30, 2018.[17] NET Core 2.2 was released on December 4, 2018.[18]

.NET Core 3 was released on September 23, 2019.[19] NET Core 3 adds support for Windows desktop application development[20] and significant performance improvements throughout the base library.

In November 2020, Microsoft released .NET 5.0.[21] The "Core" branding was abandoned and version 4.0 was skipped to avoid conflation with .NET Framework, of which the latest releases had all used 4.x versioning for all significant (non-bugfix) releases since 2010.

It addresses the patent concerns related to the .NET Framework [citation needed].

In November 2021, Microsoft released .NET 6.0,[22] in November 2022 released .NET 7.0,[23] and in November 2023 released .NET 8.0.[24]

Version Release date Released with Latest update Latest update date Support ends[25] Support Lifetime
Old version, no longer maintained: .NET Core 1.0 June 27, 2016[26] Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 1.0.16 May 14, 2019 June 27, 2019 3 years
Old version, no longer maintained: .NET Core 1.1 November 16, 2016[27] Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.0 1.1.13 May 14, 2019 June 27, 2019 2.5 years
Old version, no longer maintained: .NET Core 2.0 August 14, 2017[16] Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.3 2.0.9 July 10, 2018 October 1, 2018 1.25 years
Old version, no longer maintained: .NET Core 2.1 May 30, 2018[17] Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.7 2.1.30 (LTS) August 19, 2021 August 21, 2021 3.25 years
Old version, no longer maintained: .NET Core 2.2 December 4, 2018[18] Visual Studio 2019 Version 16.0 2.2.8 November 19, 2019 December 23, 2019 0.9 years
Old version, no longer maintained: .NET Core 3.0 September 23, 2019[28] Visual Studio 2019 Version 16.3 3.0.3 February 18, 2020 March 3, 2020 0.5 years
Old version, no longer maintained: .NET Core 3.1 December 3, 2019[29] Visual Studio 2019 Version 16.4 3.1.32 (LTS) December 13, 2022 December 13, 2022 3 years
Old version, no longer maintained: .NET 5 November 10, 2020[30] Visual Studio 2019 Version 16.8 5.0.17 May 10, 2022 May 10, 2022 1.5 years
Older version, yet still maintained: .NET 6 November 8, 2021[22] Visual Studio 2022 Version 17.0 6.0.29 (LTS) April 9, 2024 November 12, 2024 3 years
Older version, yet still maintained: .NET 7 November 8, 2022[23] Visual Studio 2022 Version 17.4 7.0.18 April 9, 2024 May 14, 2024 1.5 years
Current stable version: .NET 8 November 14, 2023[24] Visual Studio 2022 Version 17.8 8.0.4 (LTS) April 9, 2024 November 10, 2026 3 years
Latest preview version of a future release: .NET 9 November 2024 (projected) 9.0.0-preview.3 April 11, 2024 May 2026 (projected) 1.5 years (projected)
Future release: .NET 10 November 2025 (projected) (will be LTS) November 2028 (projected) 3 years (projected)
Legend:
Old version
Older version, still maintained
Latest version
Latest preview version
Future release

Alpine Linux, which primarily supports and uses musl libc,[31] is supported since .NET Core 2.1.[32]

Windows Arm64 is natively supported since .NET 5. Previously, .NET on ARM meant applications compiled for the x86 architecture and run through the ARM emulation layer.[30]

Language support

.NET uses the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI)

.NET fully supports C# and F# (and C++/CLI as of 3.1; only enabled on Windows) and supports Visual Basic .NET (for version 15.5 in .NET Core 5.0.100-preview.4, and some old versions supported in old .NET Core).[33]

VB.NET compiles and runs on .NET, but as of .NET Core 3.1, the separate Visual Basic Runtime is not implemented. Microsoft initially announced that .NET Core 3 would include the Visual Basic Runtime, but after two years the timeline for such support was updated to .NET 5.[34][35]

Architecture

Main article: Common Language Infrastructure

.NET supports the following cross-platform scenarios: ASP.NET Core web apps, command-line/console apps, libraries and Universal Windows Platform apps. Prior to .NET Core 3.0, it did not implement Windows Forms or Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), which render the standard GUI for desktop software on Windows.[36] However, from .NET Core 3 on, it started implementing them along with Universal Windows Platform (UWP).[37] It is also possible to write cross-platform graphical applications using .NET with the GTK# language-binding for the GTK widget toolkit.

.NET supports use of NuGet packages. Unlike .NET Framework, which is serviced using Windows Update, .NET used to rely on its package manager to receive updates.[36] Since December 2020, however, .NET updates started being delivered via Windows Update as well.[38]

The two main components of .NET are CoreCLR and CoreFX, which are comparable to the Common Language Runtime (CLR) and the Framework Class Library (FCL) of the .NET Framework's Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) implementation.[39]

As an implementation of CLI's Virtual Execution System (VES), CoreCLR is a complete runtime and virtual machine for managed execution of CLI programs and includes a just-in-time compiler called RyuJIT.[40][a] .NET Core also contains CoreRT, the .NET Native runtime optimized to be integrated into AOT compiled native binaries.[42]

As an implementation of CLI's Standard Libraries,[43] CoreFX shares a subset of .NET Framework APIs, however, it also comes with its own APIs that are not part of the .NET Framework.[36] A variant of the .NET library is used for UWP.[44]

The .NET command-line interface offers an execution entry point for operating systems and provides developer services like compilation and package management.[45]

UML package diagram of the stream hierarchy in .NET

.NET MAUI

.NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI, introduced with .NET 6) is a cross-platform framework for creating native mobile and desktop apps with C# and Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML),[46] which also supports Android and iOS.

Mascot

dotnet bot, the community mascot for .NET

The official community mascot of .NET is the .NET Bot (stylized as "dotnet bot" or "dotnet-bot"). The dotnet bot served as the placeholder developer for the initial check-in of the .NET source code when it was open-sourced.[47] It has since been used as the official mascot.

Notes

  1. ^ The prefix "Ryu" is the Japanese word for "dragon" (竜, ryū), and is a reference to the book Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (commonly known as the dragon book, from an early cover design), as well as to a character from the video game Street Fighter.[41]

References

  1. ^ Error: Unable to display the reference properly. See the documentation for details.
  2. ^ ".NET 8.0.0 Preview 5 - June 13, 2023". Retrieved June 13, 2023.
  3. ^ a b "core/LICENSE.TXT". GitHub. Retrieved June 4, 2018.
  4. ^ "Download .NET Core". microsoft.com. Microsoft. Retrieved October 31, 2017.
  5. ^ "Microsoft Delivers First .NET Platform Developer Tools for Building Web Services". July 11, 2000. Retrieved November 5, 2023.
  6. ^ ".NET Core is the Future of .NET". May 6, 2019.
  7. ^ ".NET Framework is dead – long live .NET 5". May 7, 2019.
  8. ^ "Why a .NET Development Company Could Be the Perfect Boost | Pangea.ai". www.pangea.ai. Retrieved December 8, 2022.
  9. ^ de Icaza, Miguel. "Microsoft Open Sources .NET and Mono". Personal blog of Miguel de Icaza. Retrieved November 16, 2014.
  10. ^ Landwerth, Immo (November 12, 2014). ".NET Core is Open Source". .NET Framework Blog. Microsoft. Retrieved December 30, 2014.
  11. ^ "dotnet/corefx". GitHub. Retrieved November 16, 2014.
  12. ^ "Microsoft/referencesource". GitHub. Retrieved November 16, 2014.
  13. ^ Bright, Peter (June 27, 2016). ".NET Core 1.0 released, now officially supported by Red Hat". Ars Technica. Condé Nast.
  14. ^ Foley, Mary Jo (June 27, 2016). "Microsoft showcases SQL Server, .NET Core on Red Hat Enterprise Linux deliverables". ZDNet. CBS Interactive.
  15. ^ "Announcing .NET Core Tools 1.0 | .NET Blog". Blogs.msdn.microsoft.com. March 7, 2017. Retrieved January 18, 2020.
  16. ^ a b "Announcing .NET Core 2.0". .NET Blog. Microsoft. August 14, 2017.
  17. ^ a b "Announcing .NET Core 2.1". .NET Blog. Microsoft. May 30, 2018.
  18. ^ a b "Announcing .NET Core 2.2". .NET Blog. Microsoft. December 4, 2018.
  19. ^ ".NET Core is the Future of .NET". .NET Blog. May 6, 2019. Retrieved May 17, 2019.
  20. ^ "What's new in .NET Core 3.0". .NET documentation. Retrieved December 30, 2020.
  21. ^ "Announcing .NET 5.0". .NET Blog. November 10, 2020. Retrieved November 21, 2020.
  22. ^ a b Lander, Richard (November 8, 2021). "Announcing .NET 6 – The Fastest .NET Yet". .NET Blog. Retrieved May 6, 2022.
  23. ^ a b Douglas, Jon (November 8, 2022). ".NET 7 is Available Today". .NET Blog. Retrieved January 13, 2024.
  24. ^ a b Seth, Gaurav (November 14, 2023). "Announcing .NET 8". .NET Blog. Retrieved January 13, 2024.
  25. ^ ".NET Core official support policy". .NET. Microsoft.
  26. ^ "Announcing .NET Core 1.0". .NET Blog. Microsoft. June 27, 2016.
  27. ^ "Announcing .NET Core 1.1". .NET Blog. Microsoft. November 16, 2016.
  28. ^ "Announcing .NET Core 3.0". .NET Blog. Microsoft. September 23, 2019.
  29. ^ "Announcing .NET Core 3.1". .NET Blog. Microsoft. December 3, 2019.
  30. ^ a b "Announcing .NET 5.0". .NET Blog. Microsoft. November 10, 2020.
  31. ^ "Alpine 3.10.0 released | Alpine Linux". alpinelinux.org. Retrieved June 9, 2020.
  32. ^ "dotnet/core". GitHub. Retrieved June 9, 2020.
  33. ^ ".NET framework supports different programming languages". Retrieved April 21, 2022.
  34. ^ "Visual Basic in .NET Core 3.0 | Visual Basic Blog". Blogs.msdn.microsoft.com. October 12, 2019. Retrieved January 18, 2020.
  35. ^ "Visual Basic support planned for .NET 5.0 | Visual Basic Blog". Blogs.msdn.microsoft.com. March 11, 2020. Retrieved August 26, 2020.
  36. ^ a b c Carter, Phillip; Knezevic, Zlatko (April 2016). ".NET Core – .NET Goes Cross-Platform with .NET Core". MSDN Magazine. Microsoft.
  37. ^ Lander, Rich (May 7, 2018). ".NET Core 3 and Support for Windows Desktop Applications". MSDN. Microsoft.
  38. ^ ".NET Core 2.1, 3.1, and .NET 5.0 updates are coming to Microsoft Update". .NET Blog. December 3, 2020. Retrieved December 15, 2020.
  39. ^ "Understanding .NET Framework, .NET Core, .NET Standard And Future .NET". www.c-sharpcorner.com. Retrieved February 1, 2021.
  40. ^ Landwerth, Immo (February 3, 2015). "CoreCLR is now Open Source". .NET Framework Blog. Microsoft. Retrieved February 27, 2015.
  41. ^ "Why RyuJIT? How was the name chosen?". nuWave eSolutions Development Team Blog. November 25, 2014. Retrieved June 21, 2016.
  42. ^ Ramel, David (August 31, 2020). "Microsoft Survey: Developers Held Back by Lack of 'Native AOT' in .NET Core -". Visual Studio Magazine. Archived from the original on October 22, 2020. Retrieved February 1, 2021.
  43. ^ Landwerth, Immo (December 4, 2014). "Introducing .NET Core". .NET Framework Blog. Microsoft. Retrieved February 27, 2015.
  44. ^ "Intro to .NET Native and CoreRT". GitHub. April 23, 2016.
  45. ^ "Intro to CLI". GitHub. April 23, 2016.
  46. ^ "What is .NET MAUI? - .NET MAUI". learn.microsoft.com. Retrieved November 8, 2022.
  47. ^ Wang, Abel (September 9, 2020). What is the dotnet bot? (Podcast). Microsoft. Event occurs at 4 seconds in. Retrieved March 9, 2021.

48. Differences Between .NET Framework and .NET Core www.techieclues.com

49. .NET 9.0.0-preview.3 is now available dotnet.microsoft.com

Further reading

External links

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: .NET Development Foundation
Wikiversity has learning resources about Introduction to .NET
.NET
Common Language Infrastructure
Microsoft APIs and frameworks
Microsoft development tools
Microsoft free and open-source software (FOSS)
Categories