14 DAY TRIAL // On Wednesday, Redmond-based software giant Microsoft announced the availability of a new flavor of its Reactive Extensions (Rx) v2.0, namely the RC version.
The new release arrives three months after the beta flavor was put up for download, with a range of changes and improvements packed inside.
Among them, we can count the availability of support for .NET 4.0, which was removed in the beta release. The team behind Reactive Extensions v2.0 decided to re-include support for the Framework due to popular demand.
However, they do note that there are parts of Reactive Extensions that heavily rely on advanced .NET 4.5 capabilities, and recommend their joint use whenever possible.
“Users of NuGet will automatically receive the .NET 4.0 bits when using a .NET 4.0-based project. For those of you who prefer to use the MSI-based installation of the SDK, make sure to select the ‘Custom’ option and include the .NET 4.0 binaries from the feature selection window,” the team notes.
“We don’t install those assemblies by default in order to reduce clutter in ‘Add Reference’ dialogs in Visual Studio.”
They also explain that, if they did, “duplicate entries would show up in .NET 4.5 projects, because .NET 4.0 assemblies are compatible with .NET 4.5 configurations, so picking the Rx assemblies targeting the right platform becomes a bit of an art.”
In addition to offering full support for .NET Framework 4.5 Release Candidate, the new Reactive Extensions v2.0 RC also comes with support for Windows 8 Release Preview, as well as with full integration with the Visual Studio 2012 RC.
The Reactive Extensions v2.0 Release Candidate can be downloaded either as an SDK MSI installer, or as a set of NuGet packages. Those who are already familiar with the use of the beta release will find their way at ease with the RC flavor too.
To learn more info on the changes made to the latest release of Reactive Extensions v2.0, head over to this blog post on MSDN. The release candidate of Rx can be found on Softpedia as well, via this link.