Mar 31, 2011 11:27 GMT  ·  By

Earlier this month Microsoft released an early development milestone of the next version of .NET Micro Framework to testers. What’s important to keep in mind is that the Redmond company still has a tad of work to do with .NET Micro Framework 4.2, and that the first Alpha release is not feature complete.

Developers leveraging .NET Micro Framework will need to exercise their patience a bit longer, as they will receive a feature-complete testing Build before the release to manufacturing (RTM) milestone.

“What does an Alpha release mean? The full set of features that we hope to have for the final 4.2 release are not all in this release. There are several things that we are still working on and there are a few projects in the community that we are hoping will come in before we go to Beta,” revealed Microsoft’s Colin Miller.

However, there are a few new addition in .NET Micro Framework 4.2 Alpha compared to version 4.1.

The software giant has been hard at work improving the security of the .NET Micro Framework, but also on introducing FTP Support and a PWM Object.

At the same time, the company monitored user feedback and as such devs should see many of the issues they reported resolved even in this early Alpha stage.

“We wanted to get the fixes and features out in case you want to play around with them and if there is a critical issue that you want to address in the 4.1 release, you can pull the fix out of 4.2 and integrate it back,” Miller added. “We suggest that you do not use this release for production devices.”

Over the course of the coming months developers will get the chance to test drive the Beta of .NET Micro Framework 4.2, with Miller promising that the RTM Build will follow soon after.