Runtime Briefing — .NET 6 Long-Term Support
Microsoft released .NET 6 on November 8, 2021 with unified cross-platform runtimes, minimal APIs, Hot Reload, and long-term support through November 2024 for cloud-native developers.
Executive briefing: Microsoft shipped .NET 6 on during .NET Conf. The LTS release unifies server, desktop, and mobile runtimes, introduces minimal APIs, and boosts performance for ASP.NET Core, Blazor, and cloud-native workloads.
Key features
- Unified platform. .NET 6 consolidates the runtime and BCL across Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android, and WebAssembly via .NET MAUI.
- Minimal APIs. Lightweight HTTP APIs reduce boilerplate for microservices and serverless functions.
- Hot Reload. Enhanced Hot Reload support accelerates inner-loop debugging across Visual Studio, CLI, and VS Code extensions.
- Performance gains. JIT optimizations and crossgen2 deliver double-digit throughput improvements for ASP.NET Core and gRPC services.
Implementation guidance
- Plan migration roadmaps from .NET Core 3.1 and .NET 5 to .NET 6 ahead of end-of-support timelines.
- Adopt minimal APIs for new microservices to reduce hosting overhead and align with Kubernetes ingress patterns.
- Benchmark workloads using crossgen2-ready build pipelines and update container base images to .NET 6 LTS.