What is .NET 5?

.NET 5 is an open-source, cross-platform .NET framework, that will replace .Net Framework, .Net Core, and Xamarin with a single unified platform. .NET 5 is a single platform that you can use for all your modern .NET code with the latest APIs.

With .NET 5, Microsoft aims to improve .NET in the following ways:

• Produce a single .NET runtime framework that can be used everywhere, and has uniform runtime behaviors and developer experiences.
• Expand the capabilities of .NET by taking the best of .NET Core, .NET Framework, Xamarin, and Mono.
• Build that product out of a single code-base that developers (Microsoft and the community) can work on together and expand to improve all scenarios.

Features

.NET 5 will have nearly all the features and functionality available with .NET Core. Similar to .NET Core, .NET 5 is open-source and cross-platform. It provides high performance and allows side-by-side installation.

In addition to the .NET Core features, .NET 5 will have:

• More choice on runtime experiences, e.g., Mono and CoreCLR.
• Java interoperability available on all platforms.
• Objective-C and Swift interoperability supported on multiple operating systems.
• CoreFX extended to support static compilation of .NET (ahead-of-time – AOT), smaller footprints, and support for more operating systems.

According to Microsoft, .NET 5 is the new direction for .NET. All new development and feature capabilities will be part of .NET 5, including new C# versions.