Last week, Microsoft officially noted that .NET 7, a version of their open-source, cross-platform application framework released in November 2022, will reach its end of support on May 14, 2024. After this date, Microsoft will discontinue issuing any further servicing updates, including critical security fixes or technical assistance for .NET 7.
Developers are advised to transition to .NET 8 before the specified end-of-support date to ensure continued support.
According to Microsoft's support policy, .NET 7, categorized as an STS, or Short-Term Support release, was part of an 18-month support cycle, culminating on May 14, 2024.
As reported, May 14th is the scheduled patch Tuesday release day, during which .NET 7 might receive one final update if there exists a known critical issue.
(Official .NET release and support roadmap, Source: Microsoft .NET DevBlog)
Post the end-of-support phase, regarding the .NET 7, the following implications are expected, applications utilizing this version will remain functional but no further security updates will be provided for .NET 7.
Microsoft states that persisting with an unsupported version exposes users to potential security vulnerabilities, and also that access to technical support for .NET 7 applications may be restricted.
For users currently utilising a .NET 7 application, it is recommended to contact the respective software developer or vendor to inquire about the availability of an updated version compatible with .NET 8.
The migration to .NET 8, involves modifying the value of the TargetFramework property in the project file to net8.0. As stated, updates to development and hosting environments are necessary. According to an official blog post, detailed guidelines for this process are available in the Upgrade to a New .NET Version documentation.
Furthermore, the Visual Studio compatibility, starting from the June 2024 servicing update for Visual Studio 2022 versions 17.6 and 17.4, the .NET 7 component within Visual Studio will be labelled as out of support and optional. Existing installations will remain unaffected. To build .NET 6 or .NET 8 applications and ensure support, it is highly recommended to use the .NET 8 SDK.
Furthermore, developers also have the option to remove .NET 7 from their existing Visual Studio installations using the remove out-of-support components feature.
Regarding the current state of the .NET framework, .NET 8, was released back in November last year, and it is currently available as the latest, stable and recommended version for developers to use.
And lastly, back in February, Microsoft announced the preview version of .NET 9 which currently has a roadmap for stable release in November this year.