ASP.NET Core

ASP.NET Core
Original author(s)	Microsoft
Developer(s)	.NET Foundation and the open source community
Initial release	June 7, 2016; 8 years ago
Stable release	v8.0.0 / 14 November 2023; 10 months ago
Repository	github.com/dotnet/aspnetcore ;
Written in	C#
Operating system	Windows, macOS, Linux
Platform	Cross-platform
Type	Web framework
License	MIT License
Website	dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/aspnet

ASP.NET Core is an open-source modular web-application framework. It is a redesign of ASP.NET that unites the previously separate ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web API into a single programming model.^[3]^[4] Despite being a new framework, built on a new web stack, it does have a high degree of concept compatibility with ASP.NET. The ASP.NET Core framework supports side-by-side versioning so that different applications being developed on a single machine can target different versions of ASP.NET Core. This was not possible with previous versions of ASP.NET. ASP.NET Core initially ran on both the Windows-only .NET Framework and the cross-platform .NET. However, support for the .NET Framework was dropped beginning with ASP.Net Core 3.0.^[5]

Blazor is a recent (optional) component to support WebAssembly and since version 5.0, it has dropped support for some old web browsers. While current Microsoft Edge works, the legacy version of it, i.e. "Microsoft Edge Legacy" and Internet Explorer 11 was dropped when you use Blazor.^[6]

Release history

Version Number	Release Date	End of Support	Supported Visual Studio Version(s)
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.0	2016-06-27	2019-06-27	Visual Studio 2015, 2017
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.1	2016-11-18	2019-06-27	Visual Studio 2015, 2017
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.0	2017-08-14	2018-10-01	Visual Studio 2017
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.1 long-term support	2018-05-30	2021-08-21^[7]	Visual Studio 2017
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.2	2018-12-04^[8]	2019-12-23^[9]	Visual Studio 2017 15.9 and 2019 16.0 preview 1
Old version, no longer maintained: 3.0	2019-09-23^[10]	2020-03-03^[9]	Visual Studio 2017 and 2019
Old version, no longer maintained: 3.1 long-term support	2019-12-03^[11]	2022-12-03^[9]	Visual Studio 2019
Old version, no longer maintained: 5.0	2020-11-10^[12]	2022-05-08	Visual Studio 2019 16.8
Old version, yet still maintained: 6.0 long-term support	2021-11-08^[13]	2024-11-08	Visual Studio 2022
Old version, yet still maintained: 7.0 standard-term support^[14]	2022-11-08^[15]	2024-05-14	Visual Studio 2022
Current stable version: 8.0 long-term support^[16]	2023-11-14^[17]	2026-11-10	Visual Studio 2022
Legend: Old version, not maintained Old version, still maintained Latest version Latest preview version Future release

Naming

Originally deemed ASP.NET vNext, the framework was going to be called ASP.NET 5 when ready. However, in order to avoid implying it is an update to the existing ASP.NET framework, Microsoft later changed the name to ASP.NET Core at the 1.0 release.^[18]

Features

No-compile developer experience (i.e. compilation is continuous, so that the developer does not have to invoke the compilation command)
Modular framework distributed as NuGet packages
Cloud-optimized runtime (optimized for the internet)
Host-agnostic via Open Web Interface for .NET (OWIN) support^[19]^[20] – runs in IIS or standalone
A unified story for building web UI and web APIs (i.e. both the same)
A cloud-ready environment-based configuration system
A lightweight and modular HTTP request pipeline
Build and run cross-platform ASP.NET Core apps on Windows, Mac, and Linux
Open-source and community-focused
Side-by-side app versioning when targeting .NET
In-built support for dependency injection
Enhanced Security compared to Asp.Net ^[21]