The Runtime .NET team is excited to announce the release of ArcGIS Runtime SDK for .NET 100.6. This release includes significant new features, performance improvements, and bug fixes you can read about here… and for our .NET community we have some even more exciting news: this release includes a preview of our support for WPF for .NET Core 3.0.
WPF for .NET Core marks a significant step for the popular WPF UI framework for desktop apps by liberating it from the system-wide .NET Framework on which it currently depends and enabling you to:
- Build a completely self-contained executable with your application and all dependencies
- Update your target.NET version without imposing any system-wide .NET updates on your users
- Benefit from future enhancements and performance improvements beyond .NET Framework 4.8
To try the Preview of Support for WPF for .NET Core:
Note:- To use the .NET Core SDK 3.0 Preview with Visual Studio 2019 you must be running 16.2 or later and enable the preview through Tools > Options > Preview Features.
Starting a new app
To try a new project from scratch using the .NET Core project templates, choose the `WPF App (.NET Core)` template from the new project dialog (tip: use the search or filters to narrow the list). In the Solution Explorer window for your new project instead of `References` you’ll now see `Dependencies` > `Frameworks` under which .NET Core is listed and if you open the project properties dialog you’ll see the Target framework is `.NET Core 3.0`. To add a reference to ArcGIS Runtime, right click Dependencies and choose `Manage NuGet Packages...` then browse for `Esri.ArcGISRuntime.WPF` from NuGet.org (or your local Esri package source) and install version 100.6.
Upgrading an existing app
To try upgrading one of your existing apps we recommend following this Microsoft docs article How to: Port a WPF desktop app to .NET Core which provides detailed instructions on porting your WPF desktop apps.
To see an example of a WPF desktop app ported to .NET Core 3.0 see this PR for our public samples.
Note:- The Preview of ArcGIS Runtime SDK for .NET with support for WPF for .NET Core 3.0 cannot be used in production (which differs from the status of .NET Core 3.0 Preview 8). When building, you’ll see a friendly reminder in your Error List “.NET Core support for ArcGIS Runtime is in Preview and not fully supported”.
When will the preview become available for use in production? That depends on the progress of .NET Core SDK v3.0 and v3.1 over the next few months but we hope it could be as soon as Q4 2019 or Q1-Q2 2020.
We’re truly excited about the direction WPF is taking with the support for.NET Core and hope one day it may even allow us to deprecate support for .NET Framework…
We look forward to any feedback you have on your experience using this preview.
Thanks
The Runtime .NET Team
