.NET Framework 4.7.1 provides built-in support for .NET Standard 2.0

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Summary

.NET Framework 4.7.1 will have built-in support for .NET Standard 2.0. This means that you don't have to deploy any additional files or use binding redirects to use .NET Standard 2.0 libraries.

For a demo, check out this video.

Details

While libraries targeting .NET Standard 2.0 can be consumed by applications and libraries targeting .NET Framework 4.6.1 and higher, not all files that are required for .NET Standard libraries were part of .NET Framework 4.6.1. In fact, .NET Framework 4.6.1 was shipped before .NET Standard 2.0 was even designed. That's why building an application targeting .NET Framework 4.6.1 (as well as 4.6.2 and 4.7) will have to deploy additional files.

• If you use Visual Studio 2017 15.3 or higher, these files are automatically copied to the application's output folder.

• If you use Visual Studio 2015 and use NuGet 3.6, we'll prompt you to install a support package which will handle copying the files to the output directory.

Starting with .NET Framework 4.7.1 these files no longer have to be deployed with the application -- they are built right into the .NET Framework itself.

.NET Framework 4.7.1 also adds about 200 missing APIs that were part of .NET Standard 2.0 but not actually implemented by .NET Framework 4.6.1, 4.6.2 or 4.7.

This also removes the need for binding redirects when using .NET Standard libraries on .NET Framework because the CLR automatically unifies version numbers of assemblies that are part of the platform.

Discussion

For a discussion, please go to dotnet/standard#514.

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Reopening according to process.