Announcing .NET Native Preview

We’re thrilled to announce the first release of .NET Native. Windows Store apps start up to 60% faster with .NET Native and have a much smaller memory footprint. Our first release is a Developer Preview that allows you to develop and test apps with this new compiler. This preview release of .NET Native offers you the performance of C++ with the productivity of C#. .NET Native enables the best of both worlds!

Download the .NET Native developer preview today and tell us what you think. This developer preview currently enables building apps for Windows Store on ARM and x64 architectures (stay tuned for x86.) .NET Native will soon enable a consistent and converged experience across devices. Today's preview supports Windows Store applications. We will continue to evolve and improve native compilation for the range of .NET applications.

.NET Native continues to provide a first-class .NET developer experience in Visual Studio. You still get a great edit/compile/debug environment with productivity enhancers like Edit and Continue and code refactoring. You continue to upload MSIL app packages to the Windows Store. Our compiler in the cloud compiles the app using .NET Native in the Store, creating a self-contained app package that’s customized to the device where the app will be installed.

.NET Native optimizes Store apps for device scenarios in all stages of compilation. We optimized the .NET Native runtime (a refactored and optimized CLR) to make apps start faster and consume less memory. The .NET Native compiler uses the world-class Microsoft VC++ optimizer back-end to make your app run faster. .NET Native libraries are refactored and optimized for Store apps. And .NET Native has the capability to link in library code your app uses into the app, allowing the optimizer to work globally across your app’s code and library code. In the end, your app is optimized for your user’s device, whatever platform, architecture, OS or form factor it might be running. The end result –apps just get faster!

Some of the most popular Windows Store apps on Surface devices are already running on .NET Native. This includes applications such as Wordament and Fresh Paint, which are seeing multi-second startup wins.

Tune into the //BUILD conference for more details. Also, check out the Going Deep Channel 9 Video on .NET Native.

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