After nearly a year of the .NET Core 3.0 announcement, Richard Lander announced at Microsoft’s Build 2019, .NET 5.0 will be released later in November 2020.
The anticipated .NET 5.0 is to unite .NET Framework and Core enabling developers the opportunity to work on the existing .NET interfaces targeted on different platforms. With this unification of the two .NET branches, Microsoft is skipping the 4.0 version to avoid confusion of the latest .NET Framework.
Microsoft states the new .NET 5.0 will be user-friendly but compromising functional capabilities. The .NET 5.0 will support all .NET application types and can be used across platforms including web functionality. Moreover, .NET 5.0 will support Java and Swift programming languages to interact with native mobile application libraries. With this capability of mobile development, .NET 5.0 will also be supportive on different operating systems including Windows, MacOs, Linux, Android, and iOS.
The advantages to developing a single .NET version is to create a single common language runtime and platform; integrate programming languages including Java, Objective-C, and Swift; and improve and converge CoreFX.
.NET 5.0 Development Features
The .NET 5.0 will support the programming languages XAML, C#, F#, and VB.NET and will be integrated into the upcoming .NET interface. These major programming languages have already been supported by previous versions of .NET Core and Framework but will work together in .NET 5.0.
Developers will be able to use Microsoft’s previous frameworks from pervious .NET versions. Here are the ways .NET 5.0 can improve productivity and enhance performance for developers:
- Desktop applications will support all desktop platforms and development libraries. Microsoft’s Windows Forms, UWP, and WPF will be a part of the .NET 5.0 to be used for Windows desktop applications. For cross-platform development, Xamarin will be supported to build applications for iOS, Android, tvOS, MacOS, and WatchOS. Other frameworks like Entity, ADO.NET, GDI+, and LINQ will be supportive by .NET 5.0 too.
- Web development, and cloud applications and development will be built with Web API, ASP.NET, and Azure in the new .NET 5.0.
- Game development will be created with Unity, and supported by Visual Studio 2019, for mobile, Xbox, and other platforms.
- All IoT and device development will support ARM32 and ARM64 on the .NET 5.0 interface.
- Machine learning development, the new .NET 5.0 interface will be executed with ML.NET to apply skills, code, and libraries for integration into mobile, web, game, desktop, and IoT applications.
The new single .NET 5.0 combines two interfaces into one in order for applications to work together for developers. This new version can pave a new direction for Microsoft as it features new runtime capabilities, APIs, and language features. Microsoft confirmed there will be no future plans for Windows Workflow, WCF server, and Web Forms into the .NET 5.0. The last framework that will support the above applications is .NET Framework 4.8.
Microsoft doesn’t have plans to release other single .NET frameworks aside from minor releases to support .NET 5.0.
