Microsoft.Extensions.* 2.0 to target .NET Standard 2.0

[DamianEdwards]

The Microsoft.Extensions.* 2.0 packages will change to target .NET Standard 2.0 only. This means you will be able to use these 2.0 packages on:

• .NET Framework 4.6.1 and up
• .NET Core 2.x
• Mono 5.x

There will be a period of time during which other .NET platforms will need to catch up to .NET Standard 2.0, e.g. a UWP version with support for .NET Standard 2.0 will arrive later this year, as announced at Build.

Microsoft.Extensions.* 1.x versions target .NET Framework 4.5.1 and .NET Standard 1.x and can still be used with older platforms. The documentation on .NET Standard contains a full matrix of .NET platform support.

Why do we want to do this?

Because:

• ASP.NET Core 2.0 and Entity Framework Core 2.0 which are the main downstream dependents of these packages have already moved to .NET Standard 2.0
• it simplifies our compatibility story for the long term,
• reduces the size of the Microsoft.Extensions.* packages and all its dependencies significantly,
• and prevents Microsoft.Extensions.* 2.0 packages from falsely appearing to be compatible with platforms on which we are not doing any testing.

Please post any questions, feedback or concerns on the following discussion thread: dotnet/aspnetcore#2045