An upgrade of AWS Lambda to the .NET version 8 runtime
brings major improvements to the platform.

The battle of the Lambda runtimes is going strong as AWS is a hotbed for language runtimes. Here at IProgrammer we've been covering upgrades to the Java, Python and Javascript runtimes.

As a refresher, a runtime is the environment in which a programming language executes and with each upgrade, AWS Lambda's functions can use all the new and useful features of the given language and take advantage of the performance improvements.

Now it's time for .NET to get its upgrade to version 8 both as a managed runtime and container base image. Fundamentally a base container image for Lambda by AWS contains all the required components to run the functions. These base images contain the Amazon Linux Base operating system, the runtime for a given language, the necessary dependencies and the Lambda Runtime Interface Client (RIC) which implements the Lambda Runtime API.

As such, the .NET 8 runtime is built on the Amazon Linux 2023 (AL2023) minimal container image. This provides a smaller deployment footprint than earlier Amazon Linux 2 (AL2) based runtimes and updated versions of common libraries such as glibc 2.34 and OpenSSL 3.

With the new .NET version you can also leverage native AOT in your Lambdas. Benchmarks have shown an up to 86% improvement in cold start times by eliminating the JIT compilation and by using the native ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation. That is, with native AOT you can compile your Lambda function code to a native runtime format which removes the need to compile .NET code at runtime. This kind of compilation can reduce the cold start time for Lambda functions that you write in .NET.

Performance aside, with this release the Lambda developers can benefit from .NET 8 features at a programming language level, including API enhancements and the new features added to C# 12, F# 8, and PowerShell 7.4. For users of C# the upgrade is particularly handy since C# 12 comes with new and great functionality such as:

• Primary constructors
• Collection expressions
• Inline arrays
• Optional parameters in lambda expressions
• ref readonly parameters
• Alias any type
• Interceptors

You can now use those from within your Lambda functions too.

The Lambda .NET 8 runtime also updates versions of common libraries such as glibc, and brings a new package manager, Powertools for AWS Lambda (.NET), and a developer toolkit for implementing serverless best practices.

The runtime is available in all Regions where Lambda is available, except for the China and GovCloud Regions.

More Information

Introducing the .NET 8 runtime for AWS Lambda

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AWS Introduces A New JavaScript Runtime For Lambda

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