This past week was marked by Microsoft joining the Bytecode Alliance. InfoQ examined this and a number of smaller stories in the .NET ecosystem from the week of April 26th, 2021.
Earlier this week, Microsoft joined the Bytecode Alliance, along with other companies such as Google and Embark Studios. Originally formed by Mozilla, Fastly, Intel, and RedHat, the objective of the non-profit organization is to "create new software foundations, building on standards such as WebAssembly and WebAssembly System Interface (WASI)." WebAssembly is the basis of the client-side hosting model for Blazor (named Blazor WebAssembly). According to Ralph Squillace, principal program manager at Microsoft:
Microsoft is excited to join the Bytecode Alliance as an incorporating member to support the effort to build a more open, scalable, secure web. WebAssembly and the emerging WebAssembly System Interface (WASI) specification enable cloud-native solutions to become more secure by default and help solve computing challenges across a variety of environments, including the 'tiny edge' of systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) and microcontroller units (MCUs). Microsoft looks forward to collaborating with the Bytecode Alliance members and community as this ecosystem continues to rapidly innovate and grow.
Project Reunion received a small update with the release of version 0.5.6. the new release fixes two critical bugs, including crashes caused by XamlCompiler in specific situations. You can find more information about this update in the release notes.
Microsoft also announced that the .NET Framework is retiring all content digitally signed with SHA-1 certificates. SHA-1 is a cryptographic hashing algorithm, and it was retired since it's vulnerable to certain types of attacks (including spoofing and phishing). As a result, .NET Framework versions 4.5.2 through 4.6.1 - which don't support the newer SHA-2 signed installers - will reach End of Support on April 26, 2022. After this date, there will be no updates to these versions (including security fixes and technical support).
Other updates from Microsoft include an update to the try-convert tool (a command-line tool for converting a project to run under .NET Core) and the general availability of Delivery Plans 2.0 in the Azure DevOps Service. The try-convert update includes bug fixes and enhancements for VB.NET Windows Forms Conversions. The new version of Delivery Plans includes different views, dependency tracking, filters, and other visualization improvements.
The .NET Foundation also released its bi-monthly update with two very interesting interviews. The first one, with Reuben Bond (maintainer of the Orleans project), was about the work Microsoft is doing in the Microservices space with .NET. The second one, with Jared Parsons (maintainer of the Roslyn Compiler project), was about how Microsoft thinks about building compilers and other language tools. The update also featured the new .NET Foundation projects, including the C# standardization project and Stride - an open-source C# game engine for realistic rendering and VR.
The first version of GraphQLinq was also released this week. GraphQLinq is a .NET tool for generating C# classes from a GraphQL endpoint and a .NET Standard library for writing strongly typed GraphQL queries with LINQ. You can find more about this tool here.
Another interesting tool to debut this week was BlazorGenUI, a framework that automatically generates simple UI from C# objects based on BootStrap. While still marked as "experimental" by its author, the idea behind it is pretty interesting. The framework supports both server-side and WebAssembly Blazor.
Other relevant releases this week include PeachPie v1.05, OpenSleigh v1.4.0, and altcover v8.2. PeachPie is a PHP compile for .NET, and the project is currently part of the .NET Foundation. OpenSleigh is a distributed Saga management library, written in C# with .NET Core. altcover is a cross-platform pre-instrumenting code coverage toolset for .net/.net core and Mono.