.NET Core 3.0 is now available and we have received a lot of questions about what that means for the future of C++/CLI. First, we would like to let everyone know that we are committed to supporting C++/CLI for .NET Core to enable easy interop between C++ codebases and .NET technologies such as WPF and Windows Forms. This support isn’t going to be ready when .NET Core 3.0 first ships, but it will be available in .NET Core 3.1 which ships with Visual Studio 2019 16.4 – roadmap.
C++/CLI will have full IDE support for targeting .NET Core 3.1 and higher. This support will include projects, IntelliSense, and mixed-mode debugging (IJW) on Windows. We don’t currently have plans for C++/CLI for targeting macOS or Linux. Additionally, compiling with “/clr:pure” and “/clr:safe” won’t be supported for .NET Core.
The first public previews for C++/CLI are right around the corner. Visual Studio 2019 16.4 Preview 1 includes an updated compiler with “/clr:netcore” if you want to try it out with full IDE support coming in a subsequent preview. Keep an eye on the C++ Team Blog for more info; it’s coming soon! As always, let us know if you have any questions. Feedback and suggestions can be posted on Developer Community.
Could you elaborate on why /clr:pure and /clr:safe are not supported? I imagine it has to do with the very different nature of the compilation pipeline on .NET Core; are these compilation options no longer meaningful, or just being dropped for practical reasons?
Can we use dotnet publish for C++ CLI project?
Any chance for some modern c# features? String interpolation seems like low hanging fruit. ValueTuples would be nice as well. There’s probably something I’m forgetting here.
Considering that the majority of our workloads are now developed on Windows but run in inside Linux containers in production, not supporting Linux is unfortunate.