december-2019-update.md

December 2019 update for .NET Core 3.1

.NET Core 3.0 was released on 23rd September 2019. This version is a Current release meaning that three months after a subsequent release it loses official support. .NET Core 3.1 was released on 3rd December 2019. This version is a Long Term Support (LTS) release meaning that it will be supported for three years. Microsoft recommends all .NET Core developers upgrade to .NET Core 3.1 as soon as possible.

• Announcing .NET Core 3.1
• Download .NET Core 3.1

Chapters 1 to 16, 18 and 19

18 of the 21 chapters in the fourth edition of this book work with either .NET Core 3.0 or .NET Core 3.1. To upgrade a console application from .NET Core 3.0 to .NET Core 3.1 simply requires a small change in your project file.

Change this:

<TargetFramework>netcoreapp3.0</TargetFramework>

To this:

<TargetFramework>netcoreapp3.1</TargetFramework>

The projects for chapters 1 to 19 in this GitHub repository have been upgraded to .NET Core 3.1, as shown in the following screenshot:

Chapter 17 and Piranha CMS

See Upgrading to Piranha CMS 8.1

Chapter 20 and Windows Desktop Apps

Windows Forms and WPF apps

As with console applications, for Windows Forms and WPF apps, simply change the target framework to 3.1.

Universal Windows Platform apps

UWP apps use a custom version of .NET Core.

Chapter 21 and Mobile apps

Mobile apps currently use Xamarin so they are not affected by .NET Core 3.1.