.Net Micro Frame work as Open Sourced by Microsoft

Microsoft announced its release on November 16, 2009 and open-sourcing of its .Net Micro Framework 4.0, which provides a .Net-based development and execution environment for small devices. But the TCP/IP stack and cryptography stack were omitted from the open source effort.

Version 4.0 is available under an Apache 2.0 license. Microsoft still intends to remain actively involved in development of the framework, said Microsoft's Peter Galli, senior open source community manager, in his blog post.

"While the license will allow customers to take the code and make specialized versions to fit their needs, customers told us they wanted Microsoft to stay involved to avoid any possible fragmentation of the platform," Galli said. The Net Micro Framework 4.0 effort was revealed at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.

As part of the open source move, developers get access to source code for almost all of the product, including base class libraries and CLR (Common Language Runtime) code. The libraries contain implementations of primary functionality that managed applications call into for communications, system functions like threading, UI and more, according to Microsoft's Colin Miller, program manager for .Net Micro Framework.

"However, both the TCP/IP stack and cryptography libraries are not included in the source code," Galli said. "Program Manager Colin Miller told me this was because the TCP/IP stack is third-party software that Microsoft licenses from EBSNet, so we do not have the rights to distribute that source code. If someone needs to access the source code for the TCP/IP stack, they can contact EBSNet directly."

"As for the cryptography libraries, they are not included in source code because they are used outside of the scope of the .Net Micro Framework. Customers who need to have access to the code in the cryptography functions will find that these libraries can be replaced," 

NOTE: This post was originally posted at http://port25.technet.com/archive/2009/11/16/microsoft-to-open-source-the-net-micro-framework.aspx. I found it useful, so posting over here.

Major Features of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2

SharePoint Development in Visual Studio 2010

Visual Studio 2010 provides an alternative to creating SharePoint applications through SharePoint Designer. Visual Studio promotes rapid SharePoint development by providing such features as advanced debugging tools, IntelliSense, statement completion, and project templates. Visual Studio also takes advantage of advanced .NET Framework-based tools and languages. SharePoint projects can be developed by using either Visual Basic or Visual C#.

Silverlight and WPF Data Binding in Visual Studio 2010

Visual Studio 2010 now offers Drag and Drop data binding for WPF applications. After you add a data source to your project, you can generate data-bound Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) controls by dragging items from the Data Sources window to the WPF Designer.

Core Coding Experience in Managed Languages

Visual Studio 2010 is an exciting release in managed languages and tools. Visual C# and Visual Basic languages continue to evolve towards feature parity, strive to simplify programming and deployment with the Microsoft Office APIs, and allow easy interop to dynamic languages. Visual F# is a new programming language which combines functional, object-oriented and explorative programming to provide a succinct, expressive and scalable language for .NET. In the tools space, Visual Studio 2010 offers greater support for Test-Driven Development, where tests are written before product code as an iterative approach to software design.

Native Development

Visual C++ 2010 provides a powerful and flexible development environment for creating Microsoft Windows-based and Microsoft .NET-based applications.

Parallel Computing

The Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework 4 and the Concurrency Runtime for Visual C++ 2010 enable developers to leverage parallel computing. By using these frameworks, developers can write parallel applications that will scale efficiently as the numbers of cores and processors increase. By avoiding the complexities of thread-focused programming models, the new parallel libraries simplify the production of parallel code and enable developers to more easily take advantage of parallel hardware. Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 also provides new debugging and profiling tools to help developers understand and verify the behavior of their parallel applications.

Visual Studio Extensibility

Downloading and managing extensions has never been easier. The ability to find and download your favorite extension is now integrated into common dialogs like the New Project Dialog. Configuring, managing and uninstalling extensions is much easier through the new Extension Manager.

Office Development in Visual Studio 2010

Visual Studio 2010 comes with improved Office Development functionality. You can now deploy multiple Office Solutions in one package which will appear as a single entry in the Add/Remove Programs in Windows XP or Programs and Features in Windows Vista. Visual Studio 2010 now also allows you to perform additional actions after the Office solution installation is complete such as copy documents or workbooks to the end user computer, create extra registry keys, or modify a configuration file.

Workflow Foundation

Workflow Foundation (WF) provides significant enhancements in this release such as explicit data model and fully declarative experience for authoring activities, a new Flowchart modeling style, deeper integration with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and high performance runtime engine.

Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio extend Visual Studio to enable the creation, configuration, building, debugging, running and packaging of scalable services on Windows Azure.

NOTE: This post was originally at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/dd441784.aspx. I found it useful, so posting over here.