What’s New in .NET 7 Preview 3? Native AOT, Faster Startup, and GC Enhancements
Microsoft released .NET 7 Preview 3, introducing major updates such as full native AOT compilation, improved startup times, Write‑Xor‑Execute support, enhanced code generation, new X.500 certificate handling, and default‑enabled GC optimizations across most platforms.
Preview 3 of the .NET 7 software development platform brings a complete native pre‑compilation, faster startup, and reduced GC overhead, drawing attention from .NET developers.
Microsoft has released the third preview (Preview 3) of the planned .NET 7 platform, delivering bulk updates to Native AOT, code generation, GC behavior, and startup performance.
Developers can download .NET 7 Preview 3 from the dotnet.microsoft.com site; it was officially released on April 13.
.NET Native AOT (also called native AOT) has been further upgraded, promising full native pre‑compilation for desktop client and server scenarios.
In .NET 7, Microsoft focuses on console applications and native libraries as the primary Native AOT scenarios.
Developers and library authors can now ensure their applications are trimmed for Native AOT, meeting its requirements.
One expected Native AOT‑compiled application in .NET 7 is the crossgen tool, which serves as the CoreCLR AOT compiler for generating ReadyToRun executables, showing advantages in compilation speed and size.
Microsoft notes that while native AOT compatibility will improve, many cases still favor JIT compilation.
Native AOT has moved from experimental to the mainline of .NET 7, offering benefits in startup time, memory usage, restricted platform access, and smaller disk footprints.
.NET 7 Preview 3 follows the second preview released on March 14 and is slated for a final production release in November 2022.
New features and enhancements in .NET 7 Preview 3 include:
Enable Write‑Xor‑Execute, improving startup time.
Multiple optimizations and bug fixes for code generation and JIT.
Introduction of an X.500‑style class, simplifying use of encryption certificates.
GC memory utilization improvements, now enabled by default on all platforms except macOS and Native AOT.
Updated managed extensibility framework to stay compatible with previous API versions, allowing single‑instance objects in System.Composition.Hosting containers.
Enhanced support for the cloud‑native OpenTelemetry specification, with mutable sampler trace state.
To try .NET 7 in Visual Studio, Microsoft recommends using the preview channel version.
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