Microsoft has published a release candidate of .NET 6, the next generation of the company’s software development platform that will finish the parts of the .NET unification begun in .NET 5. This is the first of two planned “go live” release candidates. The development team for the past month has focused on quality improvements that resolve functional or performance issues in new features or regressions in existing features.
Due as a production release in November, .NET 6 is set to deliver improvements for cloud, desktop, and mobile apps.
Microsoft .NET 6 will integrate capabilities for Android, iOS, and MacOS that currently reside in the Xamarin open source mobile .NET platform. Microsoft also is extending the Blazor client web app development tool, so developers can build a hybrid client app that combines web and native UIs for desktop and mobile usage. Blazor WebAssembly was the first unified platform deliverable in .NET 5. Published in November 2020, .NET 5 marked the beginning of unification and laid the groundwork for Xamarin developers to use the unified .NET platform when .NET 6.0 arrived.
