Microsoft made some clarifications on ASP.NET a few weeks ago. Jeffrey T. Fritz, program manager at Microsoft, explains the recent changes in the schedule. He also gives some details related to the renaming from ASP.NET 5 to ASP.NET Core 1.0.
The dates for RC2 and RTM changed to undetermined a few weeks ago. Jeffrey explains:
We’ve heard consistent feedback on the change from DNX to CLI: “great change, but why so late?” We agree. This change is the primary reason for our schedule slip. It’s clear to us now that we were running too fast and didn’t take the time to fully think this one all the way through.
The ASP.NET team have explained the change in more detail. To summarize, the change to ASP.NET is huge and will lay the foundations of ASP.NET for many years to come. As with this kind of big project, it is difficult to estimate it accurately at this point. The team also tries to keep an healthy balance between quality and actually shipping a good product. As it will require some rework in existing applications to transition to ASP.NET Core, time is a sensitive matter in this context.
As for what are the new release dates, Jeffrey continues:
As soon as we have the new ASP.NET and .NET Core tools working together we will update the roadmap with more appropriate dates for ASP.NET and the .NET team will update their roadmap with dates for .NET Core.
Another question raised along with the naming change is: what are the new versions for MVC and Web API? As InfoQ described along with the terminology, there won’t be different versions for MVC and Web API in the future. They are now both included in ASP.NET and will share its version.
The naming change from ASP.NET 5 to ASP.NET Core also caused some confusion as references to the old name are still visible on the ASP.NET related websites. The renaming is ongoing and will be fully completed at the next ASP.NET Core release.
For more informations and updates, the ASP.NET team host a weekly standup where it answers questions and gives updates on the progress made. Announcements can also be found on a dedicated GitHub repository.