Microsoft has made an important step toward supporting the latest iteration of its development platform, Visual Studio 2010, with the upcoming version of the .NET Micro Framework. Developers can start testing the first Beta of.NET Micro Framework version 4.1 immediately, a release focused on delivering compatibility with Visual Studio 2010, as previously reported. Of course, there are additional enhancements planned for .NET Micro Framework 4.1, and the Beta development milestone offers an excellent opportunity to test-drive the new features.


“This is our first post-Open Source release and includes our first fixes and features contributed by the community. In addition, there are a number of enhancements done by the NETMF team here at Microsoft and there are new processors available from a new partner,” a member of the Microsoft .NET Micro Framework team revealed.

Most importantly, early adopters that want to test-drive .NET Micro Framework 4.1 Beta are encouraged to offer feedback on their experience. At the same time, testers should remember that.NET Micro Framework 4.1 is now an open source project, and, as such, they are free to contribute to its evolution. As it is the case with a majority of projects in development from the Redmond company, .NET Micro Framework 4.1 Beta is available for download through Microsoft Connect. Testers will need a Windows Live ID to sign in and access the Beta program for the next version of the.NET Micro Framework.

Here is a list of changes for .NET Micro Framework 4.1 Beta, according to Microsoft:

“1. Multi-targeting support for VS2010: from .NET MF 4.1 SDK it is possible to target version3.0 and version 4.0 .NET MF applications as well. This means that you don't have to migrate your solutions immediately to use the new features of version 4.1 SDK

“2. Improved application diagnostics for code size, available at deployment, and memory requirements, available programatically through Microsoft.SPOT.Reflection.GetAssemblyMemoryInfo()

“3. DPWS changes and new samples. Windows 7 and WCF 4.0 full compatibility and discoverability. Support for DPWS custom bindings

“4. Hashtable implementation for the standard typein System.Collections. This feature was contributed by Eric Harlow through the .NET Micro Framework community acknowledging the original idea from Rob Miles and extensive support from Jan Kučera

“5. SPI interface changes for added flexibility and performance

“6. Support for Big Endian processors - this enables a number of processors that we could not support in the past. The result is seen in item #11 below.

“7. Port for Atmel microcontroller SAM7S256 with 256Kb ROM and 64Kb RAM - this enables some really small applications

“8. Basic support for lwIP TCP/IP open source stack: TCP/IP tested, work on this will continue through the beta. The current EBSnet stack will continue to be available and I will write a separate description of how that will look.

“9. Basic support for OpenSSL open source stack for SSL: certificate parsing and cryptographic support compiling and tested, work on this will continue through the beta

“10. 4 ports for Renesas SH2/A processors and development boards: SH7216_RSK, SH7264_M3A_HS64, SH7264_RSK, SH7619_EVB.”

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