.NET 6 – Josh's Space

Azure Functions .NET 8 “In Process” update

June 2024 is now the ETA for Azure Functions “In Process” model to supported for .NET 8, on Windows at least. An update yesterday from Principal Program Manager Matthew Henderson on the team states:

Work is ongoing, and we’ve made good progress. The core artifacts needed are ready, so rollout is the next step. At this point we can now set an ETA: our current goal is to enable support on Windows in June. We have a few more details to figure out for Linux, but custom images should be supported at the same time as Windows.

As a reminder, you have until November 2024 to upgrade your .NET 6 functions to .NET 8, either to the “In Process” or “Isolated Worker” models.

My take on this is that if you believe there’s any possibility that your .NET 6 Azure Functions will still be useful in late 2026, you would be better off spending the time migrating over to the “Isolated Worker” model now. Here’s the guide on that:

Migrate .NET apps from the in-process model to the isolated worker model

.NET Azure Functions – Isolated Process Update

Isolation - good for Azure Functions, bad for people — Isolation – good for Azure Functions, bad for people

A short while ago I posted a summary of the current state of play of Azure Functions and .NET 5. In short, to run your function in .NET 5 you need to use the new Isolated Process. It’s so new that it’s missing a lot of the Azure Functions features, e.g. several bindings and Durable Functions. So Durable Functions users are stuck on .NET Core 3.1 until .NET 6 is supported in the In-process version.

Whilst all that is still true, there is now an update from the team on where they’re intending to go in future. The In-process version will end with the .NET 6 release and development will concentrate on bringing the Isolated Process up to feature parity in time for .NET 7. Read their post here. After that they are promising to support .NET versions as and when they are released.

This is best illustrated by reposting their roadmap from that link:

The Durable Functions support in the Isolated Process is said to arrive in “2022 or possibly earlier”. I look forward to it.