🔧 What’s New In v2.0.0 🔧

• Self-contained by default The installation scripts will now default to installing the recently released self-contained binaries, eliminating the need for a pre-installed .NET runtimes on developer and CI machines. This helps support our downstream plugins such as artifacts-keyring and reduces overhead for maintaining pipelines where building .NET projects on a different version than Credential Provider.

  If desired, installation parameters can still be used to fetch assets for specific .NET versions such as .NET 6 / .NET 8. See https://github.com/microsoft/artifacts-credprovider?tab=readme-ov-file#environment-variables for more info.

• Versioned install scripts Installation scripts will now be released alongside the published GitHub assets, meaning that pinning a given version with legacy installation parameters (such as adding .NET 3.1 from v1.x) will remain consistent even when those parameters are removed in future updates. This allows us to maintain streamlined installation scripts which maintain a minimal set of configuration parameters.

  There is no change required from users to adopt the new flow, the existing aka.ms links used to run install scripts will be updated to point to the new scripts which fetch and execute a release version's install script.

• Retirement of .NET Core 3.1 and .NET Framework 4.6.1 As previously announced in #523, support for .NET Core 3.1 and .NET Framework 4.6.1 has been officially retired and will no longer receive support or further bug fixes. Please upgrade to a .NET version that is still supported or the self-contained binaries. For backwards compatibility, if the legacy versions are still required, you can pin the final 1.x release version in your install scripts.

• Dotnet Tool Support We are packaging and publishing the artifacts-credprovider as a dotnet tool Microsoft.Artifacts.CredentialProvider.NuGet.Tool to nuget.org. Any users of the dotnet cli 9.0.200 or later will be able to install the package using the dotnet tool install command instead of the install scripts.

• Broker Support for macOS and Linux We’ve added MSAL broker integration for macOS and Linux, delivering a more seamless and secure authentication experience across platforms. This enhancement improves token acquisition flows, reduces friction for interactive sign-ins, and aligns with modern identity standards.

• Updated Asset Naming We are updating some asset names to improve clarity and consistency. The new naming convention will align with versioned scripts and self-contained binaries.

⚠️ Breaking Changes ⚠️

While we have attempted to minimize the number of customer breaks for this roll out with the install scripts and self-contained versions, this version will break a couple of known scenarios:

• Users of .NET 3.1 and .NET Framework 4.6.1 installations will need to update to a supported .NET version or migrate to the new self-contained binaries (installed by default in 2.0.0 versions of install scripts).
• Any user-maintained installation scripts which require a specific asset name may be affected if self-contained binaries are installed (removal of .Net6 / .Net8 / netfx4.6 from the download asset list).
• There may be some downtime (<1 minute) for install script users when aka.ms links are being pointed to the latest release.
• Any network or proxies with allowlists or custom configurations may need updates to enable the new installcredproviderrelease scripts and api.github.com for SHA integrity checks.