Together with ASP.NET Core 2.0 and Entity Framework Core 2.0 Microsoft released .NET Core 2.0 on August 14, 2017. Read the ASP.NET Core 2.0 and the Entity Framework Core 2.0 announcements for details. You can also watch the launch video on Channel 9 to see many of the new features in action. Also, The .NET Standard 2.0 spec is complete, finalized at the same time as .NET Core 2.0. .NET Standard is a key effort to improve code sharing and to make the APIs available in each .NET implementation more consistent. .NET Standard 2.0 more than doubles that set of APIs that you have available for your projects.
.NET Core 2.0 includes major improvements that make .NET Core easier to use and much more capable as a platform. The following improvements are some of the biggest ones but there are others. Check this post for more information.
Runtime
- Major performance improvements in the runtime and framework
- Implements .NET Standard 2.0
- 6 new platforms supported, including Debian Stretch, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP2, and macOS High Sierra.
- RyuJIT is the x86 JIT in .NET Core 2.0
- Linux and Windows ARM32 builds now available, in preview.
SDK
- dotnet restore is now an implicit command.
- .NET Core and .NET Standard projects can reference .NET Framework NuGet packages and projects.
- The .NET Core SDK can be built from source with the source-build repo.
Visual Studio
- Live Unit Testing supports .NET Core
- Code navigation improvements
- C# Azure Functions support in the box
- CI/CD support for containers
For Visual Studio users: You need to update to the latest versions of Visual Studio to use .NET Core 2.0. You will need to install the .NET Core 2.0 SDK separately for this update.
Download the latest .NET Core SDK from https://dot.net/core and start working with this new version of .NET Core.
Please share feedback and any issues you encounter at dotnet/core #812.
Watch the launch video for .NET Core 2.0 to see this new release in action.