According to the latest news, Microsoft has decided to reverse the decision to remove a key feature from its upcoming .NET 6 due to a public outcry from the open source community. Earlier this week, Microsoft angered the .NET open source community by removing a key part of Hot Reload in the upcoming release of .NET 6. Hot Reload is a feature that allows developers to modify source code and immediately see the results while an app is running.
This feature was expected for a while to be used in Visual Studio Code and across multiple platforms but Microsoft made a controversial last minute decision to lock it to Visual Studio 2022 which is a paid product and limited to Windows. The last minute change was made by Julia Liuson, the head of Microsoft’s developer division. Technically, the decision was a good and business focused move from Microsoft’s point of view but the users have not welcomed the move with open arms.
Microsoft has now reversed the change following the backlash and anger amongst its own employees. Scott Hunter, director of program management for .NET explained “We made a mistake in executing on our decision and took longer than expected to respond back to the community.”
Now, Microsoft has approved the community’s pull request to re-enable this feature and it will be available in the final version of the .NET 6 SDK. A company spokesperson said “We have taken steps to address the issue that some of our OSS community members have experienced. Hot Reload capability will be in the general availability build of the .NET 6 SDK available on November 8th.”
However, it is to be noted that Microsoft’s blog post does not address this controversial decision, instead, it suggests it was simply a mistake to remove the code instead of simply disabling it.
Hunter said “In our effort to scope, we inadvertently ended up deleting the source code instead of just not invoking that code path. As is true with many companies, we are learning to balance the needs of the OSS community and being a corporate sponsor for.NET. Sometimes we don’t get it right. When we don’t, the best we can do is learn from our mistakes and be better moving forward.”
