Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Microsoft .NET Community Toolkit backs partial properties

news
Dec 13, 20242 mins

.NET Community Toolkit 8.4 brings partial properties support to MVVM Toolkit generators and introduces new MVVM Toolkit analyzers.

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Microsoft has released .NET Community Toolkit 8.4, with support for partial properties in MVVM Toolkit source generators as well as new MVVM Toolkit diagnostic analyzers.

The update was unveiled December 12. Source code for the .NET Community Toolkit can be found on GitHub.

Partial properties now are available thanks to new C# language features in the .NET 9 SDK. MVVM Toolkit source generators now will leverage partial properties and semi-auto properties for defining observable properties. Declaring properties is now integrated with the C# language, instead of the MVVM Toolkit creating a new property and inferring its characteristics based on the annotated field. .NET Community Toolkit 8.4 also introduces 16 new diagnostics to the set of analyzers in the MVVM Toolkit, providing both general code analysis for MVVM scenarios and CsWinRT trim/AOT code analysis for UWP and WinUI 3.

In other changes and improvements, the MVVM Toolkit now includes MSBuild logic for friendly error messages when using an incorrect version of the Windows SDK package, and suggests how to fix it and which version to use. Custom diagnostic suppressions now work correctly when using custom attribute targets on [ObservableProperty] fields. More WinRT analyzers have been added for class-level attributes. And NuGet packages can be updated to the latest stable version.

.NET Community Toolkit is a collection of helpers and APIs that work for .NET developers. It is agnostic of any specific UI platform. .NET Community Toolkit 8.4 follows the August release of .NET Community Toolkit 8.3, which brought support for .NET 8 and NativeAOT. 

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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