The .NET ecosystem is available as a stack for any kind of developer (mobile, desktop, cloud, Windows or non-Windows). Every platform has a different base class library so if you want to encapsulate parts of your application (or create a new library ) that will run on all platforms you will need implementations for each platform. So, the solution was to unify all these base class libraries into one base class library called .NET Standard. This way, a developer can master only one base class library, the code reuse targets a big surface area and the .NET Standard can grow faster without updating any platforms.
.NET Standard is a specification and in the same time a type of class library with a set of APIs that the current and future platforms have to implement.
.NET Standard will replace Portable class libraries.
Higher versions of .Net Standard will incorporate all APIs from previous versions.
Specific platforms of .NET implements specific version of .NET Standard.
How do you choose what version of .NET Standard to target?
- the higher the number of the version of .NET Standard is the more APIs you have available
- the lower the number of the version of .NET Standard is the more platforms you can run on (the more .NET platforms implemented the standard)
Read more about .NET Standard: https://github.com/dotnet/standard
The catalog of APIs – https://apisof.net/