14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has released to web (RTW) the latest iteration of the .NET Micro Framework. According to the Redmond company, .NET Micro Framework 4.1 RTW can be downloaded through the Microsoft Download Center, with the software giant promising that the release is very stable, considering the amount of time that the project spent in Beta stage. Microsoft also advised existing developers to make sure that any previous versions of.NET Micro Framework be uninstalled prior to moving to .NET Micro Framework 4.1 RTW.
“Please remove previous versions of .NET Micro Framework before trying to install. With the Multi-targeting support (…), this release will support your work on multiple versions. The installations with multiple files (like the Porting Kit) are much more successful if you save the extracted files to your local disk and install from there,” a member of the NETMF Team revealed.
.NET Micro Framework 4.1 RTW comes to the table with a range of enhancements, impacting various areas of the project. With version 4.1, Microsoft introduced support for Visual Studio 2010. This will permit developers to leverage version 4.1 in concert with Visual Studio 2010 in order to also build applications for 4.0 and 3.0 of .NET Micro Framework, a feature which the company calls multi-targeting. There are also DPWS enhancements, which means that the software giant now supports compatibility with Windows 7, WCF 4.0 and Custom Bindings.
The NETMF team representative enumerated additional .NET Micro Framework 4.1 RTW features:
•Big Endian support – in previous versions, only Little Endian architectures were supported. With Big Endian support we can now support a new set of processors
•New ports included – along with Big Endian support, we have support from our newest partner – Renesas Electronics. The processors and development boards that they have provided ports for are: SH7216 RSK, SH27264 M3A HS64, SH7264 RSK, SH7619 EVB.
•Two TCP/IP Stack options
◦EBSnet Stack – This is the excellent stack that has been in .NETMF for years now and continues to be the default stack. This stack is supported by EBSnet and a number of extensions are also available through them. ◦lwIP – this is an Open Source stack that has been added to .NETMF in this version
•OpenSSL – this is an Open Source SSL stack to be used in conjunction with the lwIP Open Source stack
•Improved Application Diagnostics to assist in determining the size of the application
•Hashtable implementation
•SPI interface changes to ad flexibility and increase performance
•Port for SAM7S256 to support simple applications in very small footprint devices."
The .NETMF SDK(.NET Micro Framework 4.1 SDK ) is available for download here.
The .NETMF Porting Kit (.NET Micro Framework 4.1 Porting Kit ) is available for download here.