.NET Core 2.0 is available today as a final release. You can start developing with it at the command line, in your favorite text editor, in Visual Studio 2017 15.3, Visual Studio Code or Visual Studio for Mac. It is ready for production workloads, on your own hardware or your favorite cloud, like Microsoft Azure.

Today we have several releases to talk about: there’s the release of Visual Studio 2017 version 15.3, the release of .NET Core 2.0, and a release of Visual Studio for Mac version 7.1. We’ll talk about them briefly in that order, but as always, there’s a lot more information in the release notes for each product. If you’d like to jump right in, download Visual Studio 2017 version 15.3, download .NET Core 2.0, and download Visual Studio for Mac.

Angular 8 is in the release candidate (RC) phase as of this writing and should be finalized by the end of May 2019. Version 9 should be coming in Q4 of this year. 

The fourth preview of Entity Framework Core (EF Core) 8 is available on NuGet today!

Basic information

EF Core 8, or just EF8, is the successor to EF Core 7, and is scheduled for release in November 2023, at the same time as .NET 8.

EF8 previews currently target .NET 6, and can therefore be used with either .NET 6 (LTS) or .NET 7. This will likely be updated to .NET 8 as we near release.

EF8 will align with .NET 8 as a long-term support (LTS) release. See the .NET support policy for more information. 

this release we are all-in on Visual Studio 2022 Preview 2. This also marks the first time we are shipping .NET MAUI as a workload installation.  

Today, we’re announcing .NET Core 3.1 Preview 1. .NET Core 3.1 will be a small release focused on key improvements in Blazor and Windows desktop, the two big additions in .NET Core 3.0. It will be a long term support (LTS) release with an expected final ship date of December 2019. 

The first preview of Entity Framework Core (EF Core) 8 is available on NuGet today!

Basic information

EF Core 8, or just EF8, is the successor to EF Core 7, and is scheduled for release in November 2023, at the same time as .NET 8.

EF8 currently targets .NET 6. This will likely be updated to .NET 8 as we near release.

EF8 will align with .NET 8 as a long-term support (LTS) release. See the .NET support policy for more information. 

• We improved solution load performance by optimizing design time build.
• We've added installation progress details on Visual Studio Installer.
• You can pause your installation and resume at a later time.
• We streamlined the update process so the notification takes you directly to the Installer.
• Non-administrators can create a VS layout.
• We added a new shortcut for Edit.Duplicate in the keyboard mapping.
• We made significant improvements to the F# language and tools, particularly for .NET Core SDK projects.
• The C++ compiler optimizes your code to run faster through improved optimizations.
• C++ Mapfile generation overhead is reduced in full linking scenarios.
• Debug options are available for Embedded ARM GCC support.
• We added strong name signing on CoreCLR for the C# compiler.
• Visual Studio Tools for Xamarin has lots of new productivity updates for iOS and Android developers.
• Python no longer requires a completion DB, and Anaconda users have support for conda.
• The Performance Profiler's CPU Usage Tool can display logical call stacks for asynchronous code.
• The CPU Usage tool displays source line highlighting and async/await code with logical 'Call Stack Stitching'.
• The debugger supports thread names set via SetThreadDescription APIs in dump debugging.
• Snapshot Debugging can be started from the Debug Target dropdown for ASP.NET applications.
• We've launched the initial implementation of Navigate to decompiled sources for .NET code navigation.
• New enhancements for Configure Continuous Delivery include support for TFVC, Git authentication over SSH, and containerized projects.
• You can now click on the Continuous Delivery tile in Team Explorer to configure automated build and deployments for your application.
• Team Explorer supports Git tags and checking out pull request branches.
• Service Fabric Tooling for the 6.1 Service Fabric release is now available.
• The Windows 10 Insider Preview SDK can be installed as an optional component.
• File versions for a number of Visual Studio executables now reflect the minor release.
• Test Explorer has a hierarchy view and real time test discovery is now on by default.
• We have added support for testing Win10 IoT Core applications.
• Visual Studio Build Tools supports TypeScript and Node.js.
• ClickOnce Tools support signing application and deployment manifests with CNG certificate.
• You can access Azure resources such as Key Vault using your Visual Studio accounts. 

The ASP.NET team is proud to announce general availability of ASP.NET Core 2.0.  This release features compatibility with .NET Core 2.0, tooling support in Visual Studio 2017 version 15.3, and the new Razor Pages user-interface design paradigm.  For a full list of updates, you can read the release notes.  The latest SDK and tools can be downloaded from https://dot.net/core. Read the .NET Core 2.0 release announcement for more information and watch the launch video on Channel 9.

Native .NET Core Support
In the release 2018.1, we present a full-featured report generator, created using the cross-platform technology — .NET Core. A full set of Web components such as the report designer as well as additional tools for quick export and report printing is available. The .NET Core components are included in the product Stimulsoft Reports.Web and Stimulsoft Reports.Ultimate.