Microsoft launches .NET 6 and 64-bit Visual Studio 2022 complete with Hot Reload feature

Microsoft has pushed out two releases that will delight developers. In addition to the performance-boosted .NET 6, there is also Visual Studio 2022 in its first 64-bit iteration.

Entering the 64-bit world means that Visual Studio is now capable of handling more complex projects easily, and the much-anticipated Hot Reload feature makes it possible to edit source code while apps are running and see immediate results. .NET 6 is a Long-Term Support release that introduces native support for Apple Arm64 Silicon in addition to improved Windows Arm64 support.

See also:

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• How to block Windows 11 if you want to stick with Windows 10

With Visual Studio 2022, Microsoft says it has produced a tool that will "help you go from idea to code faster than ever". This is in part thanks to the inclusion of the AI-assisted code companion IntelliCode which is powerful enough in its predictions to be able to complete entire lines of code for you. There are also improvements to the debugger and .NET language service, and new features such as Web Live Preview and cross-platform testing on Linux.

Microsoft shares a video showing off some of the highlights of Visual Studio 2022:

.NET 6 is described as the "fastest .NET yet", and is available for Linux, macOS and Windows; Microsoft draws attention to the following highlights:

• Production stress-tested with Microsoft services, cloud apps run by other companies, and open source projects.
• Supported for three years as the latest long term support (LTS) release.
• Unified platform across browser, cloud, desktop, IoT, and mobile apps, all using the same .NET Libraries and the ability to share code easily.
• Performance is greatly improved across the board and for file I/O in particular, which together result in decreased execution time, latency, and memory use.
• C# 10 offers language improvements such as record structs, implicit using, and new lambda capabilities, while the compiler adds incremental source generators. F# 6 adds new features including Task based async, pipeline debugging and numerous performance improvements.
• Visual Basic has improvements in the Visual Studio experience and for Windows Forms project open experience.
• Hot Reload enables you to skip rebuilding and restarting your app to view a new change — while your app is running — supported in Visual Studio 2022 and from the .NET CLI, for C# and Visual Basic.
• Cloud diagnostics have been improved with OpenTelemetry and dotnet monitor, which is now supported in production and available with Azure App Service.
• JSON APIs are more capable and have higher performance with a source generator for the serializer.
• Minimal APIs introduced in ASP.NET Core to simplify the getting started experience and improve the performance of HTTP services.
• Blazor components can now be rendered from JavaScript and integrated with existing JavaScript based apps.
• WebAssembly AOT compilation for Blazor WebAssembly (Wasm) apps, as well as support for runtime relinking and native dependencies.
• Single-page apps built with ASP.NET Core now use a more flexible pattern that can be used with Angular, React, and other popular frontend JavaScript frameworks.
• HTTP/3 has been added so that ASP.NET Core, HttpClient, and gRPC can all interact with HTTP/3 clients and servers.
• File IO now has support for symbolic links and has greatly improved performance with a re-written-from-scratch FileStream.
• Security has been improved with support for OpenSSL 3, the ChaCha20Poly1305 encryption scheme, and runtime defense-in-depth mitigations, specifically W^X and CET.
• Single-file apps (extraction-free) can be published for Linux, macOS, and Windows (previously only Linux).
• IL trimming is now more capable and effective, with new warnings and analyzers to ensure correct final results.
• Source generators and analyzers have been added that help you produce better, safer, and higher performance code.
• Source build enables organizations like Red Hat to build .NET from source and offer their own builds to their users.

Visual Studio 2022 is available to download here, while .NET 6 can be downloaded here.

Image credit: Eric Glenn / Shutterstock