Microsoft announces the release of second major version of .NET Core

Microsoft today released the latest version of its cross-platform, open source and modular .NET platform, .NET Core 2.0. .NET Core 2.0 comes with major performance improvements in the runtime and framework. And it implements .NET Standard 2.0, which more than doubles the number of APIs available for developers. .NET Core 2.0 has also been deployed to Azure Web Apps. Find the full change log below.

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 ARM32 is now supported, 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

Developers can install .NET Core 2.0 on PCs with .NET Core 1.0 and 1.1. Existing .NET applications will continue to use the 1.0 and 1.1 runtimes as needed.

Microsoft today also announced the release of Visual Studio 2017 version 15.3 and Visual Studio for Mac version 7.1. You can learn more about this release here.