It"s only been three months since Microsoft launched .NET 8, the latest version of its open-source development platform. Today, the company decided to waste no time in not only announcing its successor, .NET 9, but also launching the first preview version.
In a blog post, Microsoft also outlined its development goals and ultimate vision for .NET 9, which aims to offer new tools for cloud development along with new AI features as well.
Microsoft said that it will continue its efforts to build upon its cloud-based platform features for developers. It added:
We’re also turning our focus to delivering paved paths to popular production infrastructure and services, for example running in Kubernetes and using managed database and caching services like Redis.
Microsoft will work with partners so that its Azure Container Apps can be scaled in its Kubernetes-based environment with support multiple instances. In terms of cloud-based development tools, Microsoft stated that .NET 9 will include new features for Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code users via .NET Aspire.
Of course, it wouldn"t be a Microsoft-led project without some kind of AI integration. The blog post mentioned that the .NET 9 team members will work to add even more AI features to the platform. That means developers can look forward to accessing OpenAI and OSS models with lots of documentation and libraries.
Developers can go ahead and download the first preview version of .NET 9 from GitHub. The site also has the .NET 9 Project Backlog to see which new features and improvements they plan to put into the final release. Future .NET 9 preview releases will be available on GitHub as well, and you can check out the platform"s release notes every time a new version drops to see which new features, additions, and bug fixes are added.