.NET Core 2.0 is now available for developers as a final release. Developers can start developing with it at the command line, in a favorite text/code editor such as Visual Studio 2017 15.3, Visual Studio Code or Visual Studio for Mac.
Microsoft is also releasing ASP.NET Core 2.0 and Entity Framework Core 2.0. Read the ASP.NET Core 2.0 and the Entity Framework Core 2.0 announcements for details.
You can also watch the launch video on Channel 9 to see many of the new features in action.
In addition, .NET Standard 2.0 spec is complete. In case you are not aware, .NET Standard was introduced to improve code sharing and make the APIs available in each .NET implementation more consistent.
.NET Core 2.0 has been deployed to Azure Web Apps and is available today in a small number of regions. Global expansion is rolling out gradually.
.NET Core 2.0 includes major improvements that make .NET Core easier to use and much more capable as a platform.
.NET Core 2.0 Major Improvements
Runtime
- Major performance improvements in the runtime and framework
- Implements .NET Standard 2.0
- 6 new platforms supported, including Debian Stretch, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP2, and macOS High Sierra.
- RyuJIT is the x86 JIT in .NET Core 2.0
- Linux and Windows ARM32 builds now available, in preview.
SDK
dotnet restore is now an implicit command.- .NET Core and .NET Standard projects can reference .NET Framework NuGet packages and projects.
- The .NET Core SDK can be built from source with the source-build repo.
Visual Studio
- Live Unit Testing supports .NET Core
- Code navigation improvements
- C# Azure Functions support in the box
- CI/CD support for containers
.NET Standard 2.0 Major Improvements
- .NET Standard is for sharing code. .NET Standard is a set of APIs that all .NET implementations must provide to conform to the standard. This unifies the .NET implementations and prevents future fragmentation. It replaces Portable Class Libraries (PCLs) as the tool for building .NET libraries that work everywhere.
- Much bigger API Surface: We have more than doubled the set of available APIs from 13k in .NET Standard 1.6 to 32k in .NET Standard 2.0. Most of them are existing .NET Framework APIs. These additions make it much easier to port existing code to .NET Standard, and, by extension, to any .NET implementation of .NET Standard, such as .NET Core 2.0 and the upcoming version of UWP.
- .NET Framework compatibility mode: The vast majority of NuGet packages are currently still targeting .NET Framework. Many projects are currently blocked from moving to .NET Standard because not all their dependencies are targeting .NET Standard yet. That’s why we added a compatibility mode that allows .NET Standard projects to reference .NET Framework libraries. While this may not work in all cases (for instance, if the .NET Framework binaries use WPF) we found that 70% of all NuGet packages on nuget.org are API compatible with .NET Standard 2.0. So in practice it unblocks many projects.
- Broad platform support. .NET Standard 2.0 is supported on the following platforms:
- .NET Framework 4.6.1
- .NET Core 2.0
- Mono 5.4
- Xamarin.iOS 10.14
- Xamarin.Mac 3.8
- Xamarin.Android 7.5
- Upcoming version of UWP (expected to ship later this year)
For developers using Visual Studio, you will need to update to the latest versions of Visual Studio to use .NET Core 2.0.
Also, you will need to install the .NET Core 2.0 SDK separately for this update.
For more information on .NET Core 2.0 final release, visit this page.
For more information on .NET Standard 2.0, visit this page
