Future of asp.net 4.6 MVC 5

Question

I am starting a new project and I am going to use asp.net 4.6 mvc 5 for that project. I also see that this year Entity 7, Identity 3 and Signalr 3 are going to be released.

So, my question is will these new versions be also available for asp.net 4.6 or only for the new .net core platform?

Answer 1

Source: ASP.NET 5 is dead - Introducing ASP.NET Core 1.0 and .NET Core 1.0

To be clear, ASP.NET 4.6 is the more mature platform. It's battle-tested and released and available today. ASP.NET Core 1.0 is a 1.0 release that includes Web API and MVC but doesn't yet have SignalR or Web Pages. It doesn't yet support VB or F#. It will have these subsystems some day but not today.

We don't want anyone to think that ASP.NET Core 1.0 is the finish line. It's a new beginning and a fork in the road, but ASP.NET 4.6 continues on, released and fully supported. There's lots of great stuff coming, stay tuned!

EDIT: ASP.NET Core 1.0 will run on both .NET Core 1.0 and .NET 4.6 likewise, quoting from this article:

The new versions will be called ASP.NET Core 1.0 and Entity Framework Core 1.0 respectively. Likewise, the new cross-platform version of .NET will be called .NET Core 1.0 to indicate that is isn’t a superset of .NET 4.6.

Likewise, ASP.NET MVC 6 will instead be called ASP.NET MVC Core 1.0. Thus we no longer have the version number mismatch between ASP.NET, MVC, and WebAPI.

So far so good, but when you start assembling the pieces, the picture becomes a little bit more complicated. ASP.NET 4.6 runs on top of .NET 4.6. However, ASP.NET Core 1.0 can run on both .NET 4.6 and .NET Core 1.0.

Answer 2

2016 Answer re EF Core

EF Core is a ground up rewrite that doesn't yet have all the features of .NET Framework EF6 - so you probably don't want to switch to it at this point unless you actually need one of its new features.

EF Core itself is not directly ASP.NET dependant, you can use it for any .NET app. The design documents for EF Core state that it will support .NET 4.5.1, so as long as your app targets that version or later you could use EF Core.

From the design document Microsoft have this to say about EF Core (note the comment at the end of this answer):

• EF Core is a breaking change release. When there is a better pattern/API/etc. we take the change (unless the benefit is trivial).
• EF Core will not replace EF6 on the day we RTM 1.0.0.
• EF6 will still be the best choice for many applications for some time.
• We are not going to push folks to upgrade, keeping existing application on EF6 is valid and supported.
• Moving from EF6 to EF Core is not an "upgrade" scenario, it's a "port" scenario.
• EF Core is not a re-implementation of EF6 (EF Core has simpler mapping capabilities, no EDM, etc.).

2022 NOTE

At the time of originally writing this answer, what is now known as 'EF Core' was referred to as 'EF 7', because it was following on from the current .NET Framework version of Entity Framework, EF 6. That naming was then switched to EF Core 1.

Now, many years later, EF Core has reached version 7, so to avoid future confusion I've swapped all the references to 'EF7' in this article to EF Core. That includes the references in the Microsoft quote.

SignalR and Identity

As per Scott Hanselman's blog post, it seems like the ASP.NET 4.X branch will continue for a while yet, and indeed changing the naming convention actually opens up the possibility of even going to ASP.NET 5.X if needed.

Microsoft supported WebForms for a long time, so even if SignalR 3 and Identity 3 turnout to be Core 1.0 only, I'd still expect to see any new features also added into the ASP.NET 4.X compatible versions too (as was the case when new features were added to ASP.NET MVC and also WebForms). That's just my opinion though, I can't actually find the design docs for SignalR 3, which makes me wonder if it's not at that stage yet.