Iron Software Launches First Open Source Product

Nov 8, 2022 Iron Software launches its first open source product - IronDrawing.

When Microsoft announced a breaking change to the System.Drawing.Common, the Iron Software team developed an open source solution that is available free-of-charge to all .NET developers.

IronDrawing is also used in the Iron Suite products.

Replacing System.Drawing.Common

Earlier in 2021, Microsoft announced that it will be removing its support for the System.Drawing.Common library .NET 6 and in subsequent releases for non-Windows platforms, citing long-standing challenges with a low-level dependency that is vital for cross-platform support.

This breaking change has made all .NET applications and class libraries using graphics obsolete. Moreover, it is problematic for many .NET library developers who maintain cross-platform libraries that use System.Drawing.Common. This requires these developers to rebuild their libraries and NuGet packages to comply with Microsoft's recommended action.

While larger companies have the resources to do this, it will create a challenge for many developers who are time-poor and resource-poor. Ultimately, it can slow the adoption of .NET 7, which will have repercussions for the greater community.

Introducing the solution: IronDrawing

Iron Software developed IronDrawing to qwell the migration challenges posed by the obsolescence of System.Drawing.Common in cross-platform technologies.

Head of Engineering Jacob Mellor describes,

“IronDrawing is like a swiss army knife, or universal translator between all of the new .NET 6 and 7 image formats.”

Acknowledging the challenges this will create for .NET developers, Jacob explains further -

“We have open sourced a solution that acts as middleware, replacing System.Drawing objects and allowing all of the new libraries to become inputs and outputs of your .NET classes in a single method signature”

“We’re giving .NET developers an open source, free pattern to help adapt to this change elegantly that will support legacy software and new alike. This was developed for our own products, but we see the potential to give the solution to the community to help keep .NET alive. Linux support is important particularly as based on public NuGet stats, over half of our real world .NET project deployments are to Linux servers based on our NuGet's own analytics.”

“Even Microsoft Azure projects are hosted on Linux over Windows more often than not in 2022.”

Try IronDrawing for .NET now.

About Iron Software

Iron Software launched their first product in 2015. They are a Chicago based company, with offices and team members worldwide. Their most popular product is IronPDF. Collectively, their products have close to 15 million NuGet downloads and an engaged community of over 50,000 users.

In six short years, Iron Software has grown its staff and its products by ten fold. Iron Software credits its success to its agility.

Iron Software solves problems before their customers know they have them. This is more important now more than ever with the pace in which the .NET language is moving forward.