Microsoft .NET 10 Preview 2 shines on C#, runtime, encryption

Microsoft has unveiled a second preview of its planned.NET 10 developer platform, featuring enhancements related to encryption, the.NET runtime, and the C# language.

Published March 18,.NET 10 Preview 2 follows the February 25 debut of Preview 1. Preview 2 can be downloaded from dotnet.microsoft.com. A general release of.NET 10 is expected in November.

In.NET 10 Preview 2, new ExportPkcs12 methods on X509Certificate2 now allow callers to choose what encryption and digest algorithms are used to produce the output. The previous method indicated the Windows XP-era de facto standard, which generally resulted in using an older encryption algorithm.

Also in.NET Preview 2, C# 14 rounds out the set of partial members by adding partial instance constructors and partial events. These new partial member types join partial methods and partial properties that were added in C# 13. Partial members let one part of a class declare a member, which can then be implemented in another part of the same class, often in a different file. Partial members often are used by source generators.

As for.NET runtime improvements, Preview 2 continues an effort to enhance the JIT compiler’s devirtualization capabilities for array interface methods. This effort was started in Preview 1 and continues with additional improvements and optimizations.

Elsewhere in.NET 10 Preview 2:

The dotnet CLI tool has added a few new aliases for commonly used but often forgotten commands. New commands include dotnet package add, dotnet package list, dotnet package remove, dotnet reference add, dotnet reference list, and dotnet reference remove. The new aliases are provided to make the commands easier to remember and type.

The Blazor Web App project template now includes a ReconnectModal component, which includes collocated stylesheet and JavaScript files. This is intended to  improve developer control over the reconnection UI when the client loses the WebSocket connection to the server.

Quality improvements were made to.NET for Android and to.NET for iOS, Mac Catalyst, macOS, and tvOS.

Performance of WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) has been improved by replacing data structures and optimizing method operations.

NativeAOT apps now have quicker startup time and smaller memory footprints, and they can run on machines that do not have the.NET runtime installed.