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What's new in .NET 6
I'm compiling information for our next Adelaide .NET User Group meetup which is focusing on the launch of .NET 6 and Visual Studio 2022.
.NET 6 is the final area in this series. It encompasses changes to both the runtime and base class libraries. There is a lot going on here, so do let me know if I've missed something.
Preview 1
More details in https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/5853
ARM64
- On Windows, we’re adding support for Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Framework (WPF)
Theme
- Improve startup and throughput using runtime execution information (PGO)
.NET CLI
- Response files are now supported
- Directives
Libraries
- New math APIs
- Improved support for Windows ACLs
- Portable thread pool
Runtime
- Support for Apple Silicon (M1 Arm64), .NET Rosetta 2 Emulation
- Improving single file apps
- Single-file signing on macOS
- Crossgen2
- Dynamic PGO
- Arm64 performance
- Hardware-accelerating structs
Preview 2
More details in https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/5889
Theme
- Improve .NET Inner Loop Performance
- .NET has a great client app development experience
.NET Libraries
System.Text.Json
–ReferenceHandler.IgnoreCycles
PriorityQueue
- Better parsing of standard numeric formats
- SignalR – Nullable annotations
Runtime
- Framework Assemblies are compiled with Crossgen2
- Profile guided optimization
- JIT improvements
Preview 3
More details in https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/5890
Libraries
- Faster handling of structs as Dictionary values
- Faster interface checking and casting
Runtime
- Codegen
Tools
- Initial .NET Hot Reload support now available for web apps
Preview 4
More details in https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/6098
Tools
- Hot Reload with the Visual Studio debugger and dotnet CLI
Libraries
System.Text.Json
support for IAsyncEnumerableSystem.Text.Json
Writeable DOM FeatureMicrosoft.Extensions.Logging
compile-time source generatorSystem.Linq
enhancements- Significantly improved
FileStream
performance on Windows - Enhanced Date, Time and Time Zone support
Runtime
- CodeGen
.NET Diagnostics
- EventPipe for Mono and Improved EventPipe Performance
- IL trimming
- Single-file publishing
CLI install of .NET 6 SDK Optional Workloads
Preview 5
More details in https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/6099
.NET SDK
- Optional Workload improvements
- NuGet Package Validation
- more Roslyn Analyzers
- Enable custom guards for Platform Compatibility Analyzer
Windows Forms
More detail in separate post
- default font
- More runtime designers
Libraries
- Dropping support for older frameworks
Microsoft.Extensions
JsonSerializer
Source generation- WebSocket Compression
- Socks proxy support
- Support for OpenTelemetry Metrics
Vector<T>
now supportsnint
andnuint
- Support for OpenSSL 3
- Add support ChaCha20/Poly1305 cryptography algorithm
Interop
- Objective-C interoperability support
Diagnostics
- (EventPipe/DiagnosticsServer) – MonoVM
Runtime
- CodeGen
Preview 6
More details in https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/6325
x64 emulation update
Tools
- .NET SDK Optional Workload improvements
- Crossgen2 replaces crossgen
Libraries
- TLS support for System.DirectoryServices.Protocols
- Improved sync-over-async performance
Runtime
- W^X memory policy
- CodeGen
Preview 7
More details in https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/6444
.NET SDK
- C# project templates modernized
Libraries
- Reflection APIs for nullability information
ZipFile
Respects Unix File PermissionsNativeMemory
APIsSystem.Text.Json
serialization notificationsSystem.Text.Json
serialization property ordering- “write raw” JSON with
System.Text.Json.Utf8JsonWriter
- Synchronous stream overloads on
JsonSerializer
System.Text.Json.Nodes.JsonNode
support for dynamic is removedSystem.Diagnostics
Propagators- Simplified call patterns for cryptographic operations
- Full Case Mapping Support in Globalization Invariant Mode
Runtime
- W^X (write xor execute) support for all platforms and architectures
- CodeGen
Early .NET 7 Feature Preview
- Generic Math
Release Candidate 1
More details in https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/6569
- Source build
- Profile-guided optimization (PGO)
- Dynamic PGO
- Crossgen2
- Security mitigations
- HTTP/3
- SDK workloads
Release Candidate 2
More details in https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/6570
- C# 10
- .NET SDK: C# project templates modernized
- macOS and Windows Arm64 Update
Focussed posts
In addition the following posts were made:
- What’s next for System.Text.Json?
- Loop alignment in .NET 6
- Date, Time, and Time Zone Enhancements in .NET 6
- Try the new System.Text.Json source generator
- String Interpolation in C# 10 and .NET 6
- Preview Features in .NET 6 – Generic Math
- Performance Improvements in .NET 6
- New .NET 6 APIs driven by the developer community
- File IO improvements in .NET 6
- .NET Hot Reload Support via CLI
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What's new in MAUI
I'm compiling information for our next Adelaide .NET User Group meetup which is focusing on the launch of .NET 6 and Visual Studio 2022.
.NET MAUI (Multi-platform App UI) was originally announced way back in May 2020 at BUILD 2020, and then updated in a blog post in February 2021. .NET MAUI is an evolution of the increasingly popular Xamarin.Forms toolkit.
We had to wait for preview 3 before more information about MAUI was forthcoming.
Preview 3
- Windows Desktop Now Supported
- Updates to Controls and Layouts
- Semantic Properties for Accessibility
Preview 4
- BlazorWebView
- Splash Screen
- Raw Assets
- Visual Studio Productivity
- Ecosystem Readiness
Preview 5
- Animations
- UI Components
- Single Project Templates Updates
Preview 6
- Workload Installation
- Gestures
- Clipping
- Native Alerts
- Single Project and Windows
Preview 7
- New Layouts
- Accessibility Changes and Improvements
- Font Scaling
Around this time a blog post was also published highlighting previews of the Community Toolkits.
Preview 8
Coinciding with the .NET 6 Release Candidate 1 releases. This is when the announcement was made that MAUI would not be shipping in November as originally planned. MAUI will stay in preview until into 2022.
Preview 9
Coinciding with .NET 6 Release Candidate 2
- Updated Controls
- Borders, Corners, and Shadows – Oh my!
- Quick Android Startup
- Ecosystem Controls (DevExpress, Syncfusion, Telerik)
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What's new in EF Core 6
I'm compiling information for our next Adelaide .NET User Group meetup which is focusing on the launch of .NET 6 and Visual Studio 2022.
EF Core 6 is the next version of Entity Framework - aka Entity Framework Core 6. Don't confuse this with the old 'Entity Framework 6' (the one you might have used with legacy .NET Framework applications)!
In January 2021, the major themes planned for Entity Framework Core 6 were outlined:
- Highly requested features
- Performance
- Migrations and deployment
- Improve existing features and fix bugs
- .NET integration
- Experiments and investigations
The blog post went into a bit more detail under each of these headings as to what each might entail.
In addition, the plan for Entity Framework Core 6.0 is also published on Microsoft Docs.
Preview 1
UnicodeAttribute
PrecisionAttribute
EntityTypeConfigurationAttribute
- Translate
ToString
on SQLite EF.Functions.Random
- Support for SQL Server sparse columns
- In-memory database: validate required properties are not null
- Improved SQL Server translation for
IsNullOrWhitespace
- Database comments are scaffolded to code comments
- Microsoft.Data.Sqlite
- Savepoints API
- Command timeout in the connection string
Preview 2
- Preserve synchronization context in
SaveChangesAsync
- Translate String.Concat with multiple arguments
- Smoother integration with
System.Linq.Async
- More flexible free-text search
Preview 3
No blog post for this release. See GitHub issue list for actual changes included.
Preview 4
- The runtime perf push
- Pooling and recycling,
DbContext
and beyond - Logging suppression
- Opting out of thread-safety checks
Preview 5
- Compiled models dramatically reduce startup time for your application
- The models are generated (similar to how migrations are) so they should be refreshed whenever your model changes.
- Some features are not currently supported by compiled models, so be aware of the limitations when you try them out.
Preview 6
- Support for 64-bit identity seed values
- Support for new BCL
DateOnly
andTimeOnly
structs for SQLite - Uniquify and validate check constraint names
- Pre-convention model configuration
- The items on this list
Preview 7
- Migration bundles - The migration bundle is a self-contained executable with everything needed to run a migration
There was also an additional post highlighting improvements to the Azure Cosmos DB Provider.
Release Candidate 1
- EF Core 6.0 supports creating and modifying temporal tables mapped to entity types