.NET 8: Introducing the New Features and Updates!

 

With the upcoming release of .NET 8, the world of software development is abuzz with anticipation. As one of the most prominent and widely adopted technologies, .NET continues to solidify its position at the forefront of the industry. The staggering statistics surrounding .NET usage only further underscore its greatness, making it an indispensable tool for developers worldwide.

According to recent data, .NET boasts an extensive community of developers, with over millions of professionals actively utilizing its capabilities. This vast network of talent contributes to the continuous growth and evolution of the .NET ecosystem.

Furthermore, several well-known organizations and large-scale corporations have chosen.NET as their preferred platform. That is why they hire .NET developers to create powerful and scalable solutions.

As we delve into the exciting new features of .NET 8, it becomes evident that this release is poised to further elevate the technology's capabilities and empower developers to achieve even greater heights. Let us embark on a journey of exploration and discovery, uncovering the remarkable advancements and enhancements that await us in the latest iteration of .NET.

DOT NET 8 is the successor to .NET 7. It will be supported for three years as a long-term support (LTS) release.

. "dotnet pack" and "dotnet publish"

The dotnet publish and dotnet pack commands now generate Release assets by default because they are designed to generate production assets.

. The output in the next section demonstrates how dotnet publish and build behave differently and how you can switch back to publishing Debug assets by changing the Publish Release attribute to false.

In .NET 8 we plan to make broad investments across ASP.NET Core.

What’s new in .NET 8 Preview 1?

The first glimpse of .NET 8 Preview 1 sets the stage for a series of captivating previews leading up to the highly anticipated .NET 8 release in November 2023.

Now, let's dive into the exhilarating world of ASP.NET Core and explore the remarkable features unveiled in this tantalizing preview:

1. Revitalized Route Equipment: Embark on a journey of enhanced routing capabilities, charting a course towards more efficient navigation.
2. Unveiling New API Development Analyzers: Unlock a treasure trove of insights as we unleash a collection of cutting-edge analyzers, poised to dispatch Blazor's Synchronization exceptions.
3. Empowering Performance Gains for Route Constraints: Witness the unfolding of an epic performance saga, as route constraints reach new heights of speed and efficiency.
4. Context Hot Reload: A Symphony of .NET Fields, Properties, and Events: Immerse yourself in the harmonious realm of Web Assembly, where context hot reload breathes life into .NET instance fields, properties, and events.
5. Blazor Firefox Experimental Webcil Format: Ignite your curiosity with the experimental Webcil format, an avant-garde fusion of Blazor and Firefox, delivering unparalleled compatibility and Web Assembly debugging prowess.
6. Symbol Servers Take the Spotlight in .NET Web Assembly Debugging: Unveiling a captivating act that shines a spotlight on symbol servers, enhancing the debugging experience for Web Assembly aficionados.
7. Setting Sail with the Initial Blazor WebView URL: Take control of your voyage as we introduce the ability to set the initial Blazor WebView URL, seamlessly navigating the uncharted waters of web development.
8. Kestrel Embraces Named Pipes: Witness a groundbreaking alliance as Kestrel extends its support to named pipes, revolutionizing the way data flows within the ASP.NET Core ecosystem.
9. Elevating the SPA Development Server Experience: Experience a whole new dimension of SPA development server operation, as we introduce an innovative choice that ensures smooth sailing through the turbulent seas of development.
10. Unleashing gRPC Support for HTTP/2 over TLS (HTTPS) on macOS: An exhilarating revelation awaits as gRPC embraces the power of HTTP/2 over TLS (HTTPS) on macOS, with the added thrill of HTTP/3 enabled by default. Bid farewell to the need for Annotations and http.proto for JSON transcoding.proto.
11. Fine-Tuning the HubConnectionBuilder: Empower yourself with an array of fine-tuning options, enabling you to specify server timeout and stay alive interval parameters using the versatile HubConnectionBuilder.
12. Config Support for Parsing HTTP PORTS and HTTPS PORTS: Open the door to limitless configuration possibilities, as we introduce config support for parsing HTTP PORTS and HTTPS PORTS, catering to your diverse needs.
13. Thoughtful Notifications on Unused HTTP Protocols: Enhancing transparency and user awareness, we bring you thoughtful notifications, ensuring that you are promptly notified when certain HTTP protocols are not in use.

Code Generation Improvements:

• Arm64 architecture performance improvements: Enhancements specifically targeted at improving performance on the Arm64 architecture.
• SIMD improvements: Upgrades to the Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) capabilities, resulting in better vectorization and parallelization of operations.
• Cloud-native improvements: Optimizations geared towards improving performance in containerized environments, making applications more efficient and responsive.
• Profile-guided optimization (PGO) improvements: Refinements in profile-guided optimization techniques, allowing for better optimizations based on application usage patterns.
• Support for AVX-512 ISA extensions: Integration of AVX-512 Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) extensions to enable more efficient floating-point operations on modern CPUs.
• JIT throughput improvements: Enhancements to the Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler's throughput, leading to faster code generation and execution.
• Loop and general optimizations: Various optimizations targeting frequently used code blocks, resulting in improved performance.

Blazor United:

• Unifying server-side and client-side rendering: Introducing a unified full-stack programming approach called "Blazor United," which combines the benefits of both server-side and client-side rendering.
• Single Blazor-based architecture: Enabling developers to use a single Blazor-based architecture for server-side rendering and complete client-side interactivity using Blazor Server or WebAssembly.
• Seamless switching between rendering modes: Allowing for easy and seamless switching between different rendering modes, including the ability to mix them on the same page.
• Additional rendering features: Introducing new rendering features such as streaming rendering and incremental improvements to navigation and form postings, enhancing flexibility and user experiences in web development with .NET.

Improved experience with authentication and permission:

• In .NET 8, the focus is on enhancing the authentication and authorization experience in ASP.NET Core apps. The goals are to:
• Provide insightful diagnostics: Offering detailed diagnostics to efficiently identify and resolve security-related issues.
• Simplify web-based authentication and authorization: Making it intuitive, well-documented, and easy to design and test interactions with web-based authentication and authorization.
• Deployment assistance: Providing defined procedures and tools to facilitate smooth deployment to production environments.

Native AOT

DOT NET 7 introduced the ability to publish.NET console programs as native AOT, resulting in a platform-specific executable that is self-contained and free of runtime JIT. Native AOT programs load much faster and take up less memory. The application may be installed on a device or container that lacks the .NET runtime. Starting with cloud-focused, API apps created with Minimum APIs that match expectations for published file size, startup time, working set, and throughput performance, we will extend support for native AOT to ASP.NET Core in .NET 8.

Improvements in System.Text.Json serialization

• System.Text is used in this .NET 8 preview. JSON serialization and deserialization capabilities are provided by the built-in.NET library JSON. It enables programmers to convert JSON data into.NET objects and vice versa.
• For .NET 8, System.Text.serialization JSON's and deserialization capabilities have been enhanced in a number of ways.
• This release also includes a number of enhancements that make the source generator faster and more dependable when used with ASP.NET Core in Native AOT projects.
• Moreover, types with needed and in its attributes will be supported by the source generator in .NET 8, which was already possible with reflection-based serialization.
• Moreover, it is now able to customize serialization for members that aren't included in the JSON payload.

GetItems<T>()

• Two new styles Random.GetItems and RandomNumberGenerator.GetItems have been introduced that enable inventors to aimlessly elect a set number of particulars from a given input set.

Shuffle<T>()

• Still, you can take advantage of two new styles Random, If you need to randomize the order of a span in your application.Shuffle and RandomNumberGenerator.Shuffle. These styles are particularly handy when you want to minimize the impact of training bias in machine literacy by varying the order in which training and testing data are presented.
• Using these styles, you can ensure that the first thing in your dataset is only occasionally used for training, and the last is only occasionally reserved for testing.

.NET container images

• .NET vessel images suffer some variations with .NET 8 as well. First out, the dereliction Linux distribution in the vessel images is now Debian 12( Dink).
• The images also contain a non-root stoner to make them non-root able. Add the line stoner app at the end of your Docker file or a similar command to your Kubernetes manifests to run as non-root.
• In order to make harborage changes simpler, a new terrain variable called ASP.NET CORE HTTP PORTS is now available. The dereliction harborage has also changed from 80 to 8080.
• Compared to the structure demanded by ASP.NET CORE URLS, the syntax for the ASP.NET CORE HTTP Anchorages variable is simpler and takes a list of anchorages. It will not be doable to run as someone other than root if you use one of these variables to change the harborage back to 80.

Improvements in System.Numerics and System.Runtime.Intrinsics

• The System has entered numerous advancements. System and figures. Runtime.abecedarian namespaces. More tackle acceleration for Vector256, Matrix3x2, and Matrix4x4 in .NET 8 is one of these advancements.
• In order to incompletely accelerate some operations on Arm64 processors, Vector256 was rewritten to internally use 2x Vector128T> operations.
• Vector256, yet IsHardwareAccelerated == true.
• False if IsHardwareAccelerated is true. As partof.NET 8, Vector512 is also introduced.
• To advise druggies when a non-constant value can affect unexpected performance problems, the ConstExpected trait has also been added to tackle natural.
• Last but not least, IFloatingPointIeee754 now supports the Lerp( TSelf, TSelf, TSelf) API, allowing for the quick and precise direct interpolation of two values in pier( Single), double( Double), and Half.

New Data Validation Attributes

• The Data Annotations namespace was created primarily for pall-native service evaluation. The current Data Annotations validators are substantially employed to validate stoner input, similar to form fields. The new attributes, unlike configuration options, are intended to validate data rather than be handed by druggies.
• The RangeAttribute and RequiredAttribute: types also got new parcels in addition to the new attributes.
• DisallowAllDefaultValues: The trait forces that structs for inequality with their dereliction values.
• RangeAttribute.MinimumIsExclusive & RangeAttribute.MaximumIsExclusive: Specifies whether the permissible range includes its boundaries or not.
• LengthAttribute: Specifies the lower and upper limits for strings or collections using the Length trait. For case, the( Length( 5, 100)) trait specifies that a collection must have at least 5 rudiments and at most 100 rudiments.
• Base64StringAttribute : Validates a valid Base64 format.
• DataAnnotations.AllowedValuesAttribute & DataAnnotations.DeniedValuesAttribute: Specifies accepted allow lists or not allowed deny lists. For case( Allowed Values(" red"," green"," blue")) or( Denied Values(" unheroic"," grandiloquent")).

Function Pointers Introspection Support

• Function pointers are a new pointof.NET 5. At the time, there was no backing for reflection. Use type of or reflection on a function pointer, similar as type of( delegate * void>()) or Field Info, to do this. The corresponding Field Type would return an IntPtr. On the other hand, a System. rather, a type of object with access to function pointer metadata, including calling conventions, return type, and parameters, is returned. Only the CoreCLR runtime and MetadataLoadContext support this functionality.

Conclusion

.NET 8 brings a plethora of captivating novel features and enhancements that can greatly assist developers in constructing cutting-edge, high-performance applications with greater ease.

From the inclusion of support for intricate interface hierarchies to the integration of performance-centric types, the advancements in async streams and the refinements made to JSON serialization, .NET 8 pledges to streamline and optimize the entire development workflow. Moreover, the newfound capability to publish applications as native AOT provides developers with enhanced flexibility and meticulous control over the deployment process.

As the release of .NET 8 eagerly awaits us, we can anticipate delving into these groundbreaking features and unearthing innovative approaches to augment our development workflow, ultimately enabling us to fabricate even more robust and formidable applications.