Microsoft Ships .NET Core 3.1 Preview 3 Ahead of Early December Launch, Cites High .NET Core 3.0 Download Numbers -- Visual Studio Magazine

Microsoft Ships .NET Core 3.1 Preview 3 Ahead of Early December Launch, Cites High .NET Core 3.0 Download Numbers

By David Ramel
11/14/2019

Microsoft shipped another preview of .NET Core 3.1, a "small and short" release that primarily focuses on polishing up new improvements for Blazor -- used for C#-based Web development instead of JavaScript -- and the new desktop development functionality -- Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation -- which were introduced in the milestoe .NET Core 3.0 release.

The company didn't say much about the .NET Core 3.1 Preview 3, and the scant details are available in the release notes.

Program manager Richard Lander did note that "We are coming near the end of the 3.1 release and expect to release it in early December."

He also shed some light on usage statistics for .NET Core 3.0.

"The initial download numbers for .NET Core 3.0 are even higher than we expected," he said. "We guess that 80-90% (or even higher) of the .NET Core ecosystem will move to .NET Core 3.1 within the first 6 months of the release. We are encouraging everyone to move to the 3.1 release as soon as they can, given that it has a lot of improvements (largely via 3.0) and is the newest LTS release."

That long-term support classification for .NET Core 3.1 means it will be officially supported for at least three years.

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.

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