Next up, 1.5.0: .NET 10, Avalonia 12, and what we're building for the release

[aliacollins]

o7 pilots,

While 1.4.x has been getting its community-fix patches, the next release has been quietly growing into the biggest under-the-hood overhaul since the rebuild. 1.5.0 replaces the entire foundation EveLens stands on -- and if we do it right, most of you will only notice that things got a bit nicer. Here's what's coming and why.

The headline: .NET 8 → .NET 10

.NET 8 -- what EveLens runs on today -- goes out of support this November. 1.5.0 moves to .NET 10 LTS, supported through November 2028. For a tool with EVEMon's history, I want to say this part plainly: EveLens is built to still be here in three years.

Releases stay fully self-contained, so there is nothing for you to install or do. The update arrives like any other.

Avalonia 12 + a faster UI across the board

The UI framework jumps to Avalonia 12, which shipped with a reworked compositor and rendering pipeline. What that means in practice:

• Snappier drawing and scrolling, most noticeable on the heavy screens -- Assets with thousands of rows, the skill queue, the PI flow diagram
• Lower idle CPU -- EveLens is a leave-it-in-the-tray app, and it now sips less battery while it sits there. If you multibox with 30+ characters, that's headroom back for your actual clients
• Linux gets a first: Avalonia 12 ships the first native screen-reader/accessibility support in a .NET desktop framework (AT-SPI2), and EveLens inherits it

On top of the framework, every data binding in EveLens is now compiled and type-checked when I build -- an entire class of "this column just silently stopped showing data" bugs (the #71 family, some of you remember) can no longer make it into a release at all.

Boring-but-important

• Updater engine upgraded (Velopack current stable) -- quieter, more reliable updates
• Zero known vulnerabilities across the entire dependency stack -- the kind of claim I can actually verify now, and intend to keep true
• The Windows-only graphics code that caused several Linux/macOS crashes in the 1.4.x era is not just avoided anymore -- it's structurally impossible (removing it turned any regression into a build error)
• Skill-point math, PI cycle math, and date handling under non-English locales all got hardened with a proper behavioral audit and pinned regression tests -- 2,100+ tests now guard the numbers

Credit where due

Thanks to jackmurray for kicking this off with the first .NET 10 migration PR (#106) -- his central-TFM idea made it in as-is. This is what makes a community project work. o7

Timeline & what I'd love from you

Target is end of August for the 1.5.0 line, alpha first as always. When the alpha lands, what helps most:

• Linux and macOS pilots -- launch it, open every tab, tell me what looks wrong
• Big-character-count pilots -- you stress the parts I can't
• Anything that renders oddly, sorts wrongly, or feels slower instead of faster -- I want to hear about it

Questions and concerns welcome below. Fly safe.

-- Alia

[mjedmazga]

Looking forward to all these updates! Thank you for keeping us apprised of your plans, thank you for the work you've already done on a quality application, and welcome back from your summer vacation/break!