.NET Framework v2.0 SP1

Tue, December 18, 2007, 03:26 AM under dotNET
At the same time as .NET Framework 3.5 we shipped Service Pack 1 for .NET Framework v2.0. There is a standalone update for v2.0 SP1 for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 and it ships out of the box with Windows Server 2008. For Windows Vista, it is included with Vista SP1. Of course, Fx v3. 5 depends on v2.0 SP1 so the installer for v3.5 will also install v2.0 SP1 if it is not on the machine already.

So what is in Fx v2.0 Service Pack 1?

1. Tons of bug fixes. See the list here.

2. Performance Improvements.
+ NGEN boosts.

3. Some new public APIs:
+ New members on the GC class.
+ DateTimeOffset class (this has also propagated to many other APIs that in addition to DateTime now use this new type e.g. XmlConvert.ToDateTimeOffset()).
+ Addition of the ShieldIcon for drawing.
+ IME additions.
+ File Dialog Enhancements.

4. Internal changes:
+ Increase of ThreadPool limit.

Some devs are aiming at using VS2008 to target Fx v2.0. Please note that you are really targeting v2.0 SP1. I blogged a pointer before on potentially addressing this goal, but it is important to stress again that the supported framework for VS2008 is v2.0 SP1 and not v2.0 RTM.

By the way, at the same time, the .NET Framework v3.0 SP1 was also released. Everything I wrote in the first paragraph of this blog post for v2.0 SP1 applies to v3.0 SP1 too. The list of fixes for v3.0 SP1 is in this KB article.