Today, we’re announcing .NET Core 3.1 Preview 2. .NET Core 3.1 will be a small and short release focused on key improvements in Blazor and Windows desktop, the two big additions in .NET Core 3.0.. It will be a long term support (LTS) release with an expected final ship date of December 2019.
You can download .NET Core 3.1 Preview 2 on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
ASP.NET Core and EF Core are also releasing updates today.
Visual Studio 16.4 Preview 3 and Visual Studio for Mac 8.4 Preview 3 are also releasing today. They are required updates to use .NET Core 3.1 Preview 2. Visual Studio 16.4 includes .NET Core 3.1, so just updating Visual Studio will give you both releases.
Details:
Improvements
The biggest improvement in this release is support for C++/CLI (AKA “managed C++”). C++/CLI is only enabled on Windows. The changes for C++/CLI are primarily in Visual Studio. You need to install the “Desktop development with C++” workload and the “C++/CLI support” component in order to use C++/CLI. You can see this component selected (it is the last one displayed) in the image below.
This component adds a couple templates that you can use:
- CLR Class Library (.NET Core)
- CLR Empty Project (.NET Core)
If you cannot find them, just search for them in the New Project dialog.
Closing
The primary goal of .NET Core 3.1 is to polish the features and scenarios we delivered in .NET Core 3.0. .NET Core 3.1 will be a long term support (LTS) release, supported for at least 3 years.
Please install and test .NET Core 3.1 Preview 2 and give us feedback. It is not yet supported or recommended for use in production.
If you missed it, check out the .NET Core 3.0 announcement from last month.
No blog roundup for EF?
Are there any plans in the future to support cross platform c++/CLI? That would be amazing.
C++/CLI uses a lot windows only techs, I don’t think it’s gonna happen any time soon, or at all.
Will we be able to run existing C++/CLI assemblies in .NET Core apps, without recompiling them?
I’m thinking specifically of 3rd party C++/CLI assemblies, which are keeping some projects on .NET Framework, where I’d really love to be able to use .NET Core instead.
No, you will not be able to use existing C++/CLI assemblies that were built for .NET Framework. They include code that integrates with CLR in a way that isn’t supported with CoreCLR.
Is it cross-platform? Can I use C++/CLI on Linux?
If not – that should be directly mentioned in this article.
Windows-only. I updated the text. Thanks for suggesting that.