Saturday, June 10, 2006 1:31 AM
Erwyn van der Meer
.NET Version Confusion?!
announced that the
WinFX Runtime Components will be renamed to .NET Framework 3.0. I am sad to see one of the coolest (and shortest!) product names ever to come out of Microsoft go. Farewell
WinFX...
I agree that this rebranding clears up some of the confusion about the relationship between WinFX and the .NET Framework, but I am afraid it will add even more confusion about version numbers and relationships with other .NET related technologies that are shipping in the future.
In the comments in Soma's blog entry you can see this already. I'll list some of these questions and will add my own:
- Is .NET 3.0 going to ship with C# 3.0?
- Is there a ASP.NET 3.0? If yes, is that just ASP.NET 2.0 with "Atlas" added? If not, isn't it confusing .NET 3.0 ships with ASP.NET 2.0?
- Is .NET 3.0 just the CLR 2.0 with WinFX added? Answered by Soma as: Yes, the .NET Framework 3.0 is based on CLR 2.0.
- What about ADO.NET 3.0 or will that be ADO.NET 4.0 if it is not included in this release? Or is that why it was also refered to as ADO.NET vNext instead a concrete version number.
- If Visual Studio "Orcas" is the version to use to develop for .NET 3.0, will it be released simultaneuosly with .NET 3.0? Will it support developing for just .NET 2.0?
- Will there be a %WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.0.xxx.yyy folder? If so, wouldn't that mean that CLR 2.0 is installed twice if you also have .NET 2.0 installed? If not, why would .NET Framework 3.0 be deployed in the v2.0.50727 folder?
- Will the version number for all .NET Framework 3.0 assemblies be 3.0.0.0 or just for the new components? The current state of my GAC with WinFX Beta 2 installed, indicates it will indeed be used for the WinFX assemblies.
- Will this mean that the .NET Framework 3.0 can NOT be installed on Windows 2000, since WinFX is only supported for Windows XP and newer Windows versions? Quite of lot companies still use Windows 2000 Server for hosting ASP.NET web sites. I guess they will have to upgrade to Windows Server 2003 in order to use new ASP.NET features. Or will "Atlas" run on both .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.0?
Filed under: .NET