This past week was marked by the release of Project Reunion 0.8 RC, Uno Platform 3.8, JetBrains Rider 2021.2 Early Access, and more. InfoQ examined these and a number of smaller stories in the .NET ecosystem from the week of June 7th, 2021.
Microsoft released a new preview version of Project Reunion (v0.8-rc). The new release is the first candidate for the final release, and for this reason, it does not contain any experimental features. The latest version includes many bug fixes (including all bug fixes from Project Reunion v0.5.5, v0.5.6, and v0.5.7) and minor changes in the API, controls, and namespaces. Project Reunion 0.8 RC can be downloaded from GitHub.
Uno Platform also released a new version this week (v3.8). The new release includes ports to additional WinUI controls and layouts, such as CalendarDatePicker and CalendarView controls. It also features relevant performance improvements as a result of a new Grid implementation (replaced with the original WinUI Grid implementation), support for .NET 5 AOT, and many bug fixes.
Another important update from Microsoft was a new major version of Microsoft.Data.SqlClient (v3.0). This is a significant update for developers still migrating from .NET Framework since Microsoft.Data.SqlClient is the long-term replacement for System.Data.SqlClient. The new version features configurable retry logic, support for event counters in .NET Core 3.1+ and .NET Standard 2.1+, bug fixes, performance improvements, and more. It is important to note that the new release also contains a few breaking changes.
The .NET team also released the .NET June 2021 updates, which included Secure and Quality Rollup cumulative updates and new .NET SDK and Runtime versions (v5.0.7 and v3.1.16) for Windows, macOS, and Linux, for x86, x64, Arm32, and Arm64. The new .NET versions include bug and vulnerability fixes. The Security and Quality Rollup contains quality and reliability improvements related to CLR, Windows Forms, and WPF, and it is available via Windows Update, Windows Server Update Services, and Microsoft Update Catalog.
Another interesting release from this week was a new pre-release of JetBrains Rider 2021.2 (via the Early Access Program). The new release features client-side debugging for Blazor WebAssembly - a first among .NET IDEs. The feature still has certain limitations: it only works for .NET 5.0 and .NET Core 3.1 applications, there is no simultaneous debugging of server-side and client-side code, and no support for pages opened in a separate browser tab or window. However, it already works on Linux (upon manual installation of dev certificates), and it also supports the debugging proxy with either Microsoft.AspNetCore.Components.WebAssembly.DevServer or the Microsoft.AspNetCore.Components.WebAssembly.Server packages.
Laurent Ellerbach, principal software engineer at Microsoft, showcased the use of .NET nanoFramework with a .NET application running on a Micro Controller Unit (MCU) on a simple battery for multiple years. While the application itself is relatively simple, the post provides a detailed analysis of a practical IoT experiment using .NET - making it a very interesting reading for .NET IoT developers.
Richard Lander, program manager at Microsoft, released two new posts in his series of "conversations" - which are, in essence, discussions with multiple team members about a specific topic. The two new conversations published this week focus on topics not limited to the .NET ecosystem: one about containers and another about diagnostics. The conversation series are rich, targeting technical experts and .NET developers who want to know more about a specific topic.