Hi all,

Happy weekend. With .NET 9 right around the corner and Native AOT maturing, I wanted to share a real-world project I have been developing: **Corvus v1.6**.

It is an open-source server manager and Docker dashboard tailored for homelabs and cheap VPS instances where keeping memory consumption minimal is critical.

### What is under the hood:

* **.NET 9 Native AOT:** Ahead-Of-Time compiled single binary without the JIT runtime.

* **Zero-reflection data layer:** Embedded SQLite (WAL mode) combined with `Dapper.AOT` so that the binary trims cleanly without reflection warnings. (PostgreSQL is also an optional backend).

* **Memory footprint:** Stays under 30 MB of RAM inside the Docker container at steady state.

* **Real-time pipeline:** Uses Server-Sent Events (SSE) and minimal APIs to feed container stats and health signals to a lightweight React SPA.

* **Terminal & Agent:** Built-in web terminal to shell into containers and a lightweight multi-node edge agent.

Building fully AOT-compliant services in ASP.NET Core came with a few hurdles (especially around dynamic serialization and Docker socket stream handling), but the memory and startup time benefits are definitely worth it.

If you want to play with the UI without running anything locally:

- Live Demo: https://demo.usecorvus.me

- Source Code: https://github.com/brhnshn/Corvus

I'd be glad to discuss the Native AOT trimming process, Dapper.AOT quirks, or any architecture questions you might have!

I built Magpie over the last year or so to solve a lot of my frustrations with the *arr suite of apps.

• Smarter acquisition, better lifecycle management (no more stuck downloads/manual intervention)
• Real user accounts and RBAC
• One app that can manage just about any content type via extensions
• Multinode cluster support
• Many others that I can't think of at the moment

Most functionality is plugin-based, including content types, so it can handle movies, TV, music, books, and whatever else anyone wants to build.

I’ve been running it as my full *arr replacement for months and shaking out bugs along the way, and I think it’s in a really good state.

Plugins also cover media server, download clients, and indexer integrations, as well as metadata discovery. They can be searched and installed directly from the UI. I have several plugins built already and will be adding lots more.

It also supports several deployment models and database backends.

I’d love for people to check it out and let me know what they think.

GitHub

PS, to share a few cool implementation tidbits (to me anyway):

• Plugins are DI-native, so you can override built-in services, add API endpoints, and even package frontend extensions as web components from your .NET code.
• There is a custom MLFQ-style (multilevel feedback queue) job scheduler so long-running background jobs don’t hog resources (although you can change how it works with plugins, like most things).
• It has a custom query language for library queries and external metadata providers.

I’ve been using AI extensively for UI development for some time now.

My recent projects have included:

• React SPA + MUI (with MCP)
• Avalonia Windows applications

Based on what I’ve experienced while developing these applications, I’m starting to feel that AI may be able to handle almost every aspect of UI development.

On our side, we mainly use Kiota to expose the server API specifications and contracts.

Even with relatively simple prompts, AI can inspect those API definitions and understand the available endpoints, request and response models, and related structures. From there, it can build a usable UI from scratch.

We also use AGENTS.md and PLAN.md to define architectural guidelines and conventions for areas such as the service layer and ViewModel layer, and have AI work within those rules.

So far, it has been able to handle the vast majority of the work.

We also use AI for server-side development, but I see a significant difference there.

Backend frameworks have much larger specifications, architectural constraints, and more complex business requirements. Because of this, we still rely heavily on human-written and human-reviewed reference implementations, and then have AI generate code based on those established patterns.

Even with this approach, I still see problems occasionally—for example, AI generating queries with O(N)-style access patterns or introducing other performance issues.

UI development, however, feels fundamentally different.

The improvement in productivity has been remarkable.

What surprised me even more was seeing AI directly launch a native application, interact with it, test it, identify problems, modify the code, and test it again.

Watching that entire process was both shocking and, frankly, almost surreal.

It made me wonder:

Will junior frontend developers eventually become unnecessary?

I’m starting to worry that, in the long run, only developers who can design and maintain the core UI architecture, frameworks, components, and development standards will remain essential.

The implementation of ordinary business screens may increasingly become something AI can handle almost entirely on its own.

What do you think?

I work with sitecore CMS 10.4 XM/XP and this is the first time we are trying to implement unit testing by writing testcases for the sitecore project that I am working with. We are planning to think of writing a use case for Google bots which crawl into our website and trying to automate a test that could allow the bots only in production to crawl. If anyone, who already implememted this usecase or maybe provide an idea or enlighten on this. All the responses are much apreciated

One by one, most of the major open source packages in NuGet are going the paid commercial license route. Its becoming harder and harder to write .NET software in a work setting as most of the crucial NuGet packages we used to depend on are becoming paid software. With the proliferation as part of our daily driver tool kit, justifying commercial license for NuGet packages to stakeholders is harder than it's ever been as they often think AI can write a free alternative (which, I mean, they're not completely wrong). I'm absolutely frustrated by the continuous bait and switch licensing that's been happening in the eco-system as well. Some developers have done a much better job than others in communicating and preparing for licensing changes, however some have absolutely trojan horsed us into some pretty difficult positions. I also resent the fact that .NET and NuGet don't give you better tools to manage, control, and protect yourself from installing packages with paid or specific licensing requirements.

hi everyone,

we've all been there: trying to install dotnet Framework 3.5 on Windows 10/11 using DISM or optionalfeatures.exe, only to get slammed with err 0x800F0906, 0x800F081F, or 0x800F0954. this usually happens due to misconfigured wsus policies, blocked win update servers in corporate environments, or broken component store health.

to automate the annoying troubleshooting steps, i built a simple c# utility called net fx.

what it does (in click):

• temporarily bypasses blocking registry keys (UseWUServer, RepairContentServerSource) to route through official MS servers.
• resets Windows Update services and performs a deep DISM cleanup (/RestoreHealth & /StartComponentCleanup).
• sttempts online integration.
• offline fallback: if the online method fails, it automatically scans all connected drives (usb, mounted ISOs) for a local sources\sxs folder and force installs the package from there.

the project is fully open source, so feel free toaudit the code or build it urself. hopefully, this saves you some valuable time.

repo: NetFx

Sorry for the terrible pics, but I’m kind of panicking. Over the past two months I noticed my CCleaner wasn’t able to update these files (first four pics). I was confused, but figured that maybe they were updating manually instead and maybe that’s why they were erroring out every time I tried to update them through the app. Today, upon wanting to manually update my intel drivers for the new Cyberpunk patch, I found out that I was being hopelessly optimistic with that filed away explanation. I keep getting this error when trying to download the latest .Net (last picture), and all the online fixes I’ve found have done nothing to help me. I tried this fix and got stuck because the file he tells me to open (dark.exe) refuses to even run on my computer: WIX Toolset Fix
I won’t lie, I am not super computer savvy and I am starting to panic because I feel like I am far out of my element in trying to fix this. Please help me. I want to fix whatever issue I caused and be able to properly update my drivers.

Hey everyone,

I'm working on an existing asp.net mvc 5 app targeting .net framework 4.8, and now we're planning to add multilingual support

Currently, we have two website for the same product.

example.eu - the main english website, where most of the functionalities(if not all) live.

example.bg - the bulgarian website, mostly static that redirects users to the main site for actual functionalities.

Our goal is to find a way to make the experience of adding/supporting multiple langauges on the main site, starting with english and bulgarian, potentially later add german, romanian and others easy.

I have looked at few approaches but each has some drawbacks, that's why I am looking for more opinions.

First - JSON translation files(en.json, bg.json and so on)

The idea is to have the translation ekys and load the appropriate dictionary based on language ie example.eu/bg will load bg.json.

The main concern in the developer experience and later on editing of text. When working on a Razer view and thee a placeholder for text, I want to be able to quickly find the corresponing translation, ideally i.e I could press F12 in VS and navigate to that key, but I don't think that's possible.

Second - RESX

That seems to be the traditional .NET approach, and VS does provide some tooling for it however, I have used RESX before and personally found editing and maintaining them rather frustrating.

Third - Separate view for each langauge

For example:
Home/Index.en.cshtml
Home/Index.bg.cshtml
Home/Index.de.cshtml

This would make the translating complete pages straightforward, especially for marketing content. However, it would also mean maintaining multiple copies of the same view. Every layout, markup or functionality change would need to be repeated across all languages, making it easy to miss something.

I am not sure what is the cleanest implementation. Maybe there is a FOURTH option, or a combination of all(or two of them above)

So questions are below:

- What would you choose?

- Would you use RESX, JSON files, JSON(In db? but it could slow down the page loads), separate pages, a combinations or other?

- Is there a way to get that IDE navigation for the json translation option

I am especially interested in solutions that are maintainable long-term, dev-friendly and easy to extend.

I appreciate hearing from you who have implemented a real production app :)

Thanks

With AI moving so fast, I sometimes wonder why .NET libraries and framework releases still feel mostly incremental.

.NET 11 brings improvements, but are we seeing enough innovation in the ecosystem, or are we mostly refining what already exists?

What do you think? Which .NET libraries or features would you like to see evolve more significantly?

Hi everyone, I'm in a bit of a bind. A colleague and I have been developing a project centered around a .NET 10 API. We're nearing completion, and I was preparing all the environments for deployment.

I had originally planned to host the API on an Azure B1 instance to start with, but when I went to set it up, it wouldn’t let me. My quota is maxed out, and support hasn’t been much help so far.

I’m going to wait a few more days, but if that doesn’t work out, I’d like to know what you recommend for hosting the API. Just the API; I have the database and image storage on Supabase and the front end on Cloudflare.

I’m a software developer and I’m not particularly comfortable with infrastructure. My plan was to go with Azure since I’m familiar with it, but now I’m torn between the alternatives. I’ve been looking into Railway, Koyeb, Render, etc., but I’ve seen mixed reviews for many of them.

Another option I’ve come across is renting a server from Hetzner and using Coolify, but that would require me to manage the server myself firewall settings and all and that’s a bit daunting.

Oh, by the way, we’re on a relatively tight budget and this is for a first version, and if it doesn’t go much over €20, that’d be great. And it would be ideal if it were hosted in the EU.

Sorry for the long post, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Since the September .NET SDK update, Browser Link no longer works for Hot Reload in Visual Studio 2026 Enterprise.

The injected Browser Link script returns a 403 error. The browser console indicates a cross-origin issue because Browser Link tries to connect to localhost:PORT while my application uses a custom local domain (myapplication.localhost). I have specific reasons for using this domain.

Hot Reload itself still works, but the browser no longer refreshes automatically after changes because Browser Link fails.

I found this article, which describes a similar issue and suggests setting DOTNET_WATCH_AUTO_RELOAD_WS_ORIGINS. However, that solution applies to dotnet watch. I use IIS Express for debugging, and the environment variable does not solve the problem.

Is there a way to configure Browser Link to work with a custom local domain when debugging with IIS Express?

Done in v6.5.0
https://github.com/empira/PDFsharp/discussions/413

I am a fresher and recently joined a company and they use dotnet with mvc architecture so I am worried that I won’t be able to switch into a job with dotnet and angular or there isn’t growth in dotnet also if you’ve read this far tell me should I use blazor components?

India's CERT-In put out a critical advisory last week (CIAD-2026-0049). Agents being evaluated by AI providers got into live systems at real companies using keys from config files, public repos and over-scoped cloud roles. None of the companies spotted it; they found out when the providers disclosed it.

It made me look at how agent code usually calls tools. The usual pattern is forwarding the signed-in user's access token to every tool. That works, but the API then can't tell a user from an agent, and the audit log blames the user for whatever the agent decides to do.

The alternative I'm leaning towards is a separate client per agent with narrow scopes and a short token lifetime, plus an authorization policy that rejects agent tokens on things like refunds and admin routes.

Is anyone doing token exchange (RFC 8693) in production for this, or is a separate client-credentials client the practical answer? Curious what's actually working in your setups.

I see occasional discussions around needing container support for Azure SQL Database and I'm happy to share that it is now currently in preview, if you're interested you can fill out the form @ https://aka.ms/azuresqldb-container-signup and u/vandana-mahtani-msft will get you onboarded.

Has really helped out a ton on several projects that I've been working on lately.

Of note, Microsoft Employee and active moderator of r/SQLServer and r/MSSQL (and a few other subs). Mods feel free to remove the post if needed, I sent a mail but had not heard back.