Monday, 9 February 2026

STS versus LTS in .NET Versioning (STANDARD vs LONG)

STS and LTS have very specific meanings in .NET versioning. WinJoes must be truly on top of these different versioning schemes.

For example, WinJane may be faced with a choice to build a console app with .NET 8.0 (LTS) or .NET 9.0 (STS) and should understand the trade-offs between the two.

STS = Standard Term Support (NOT short term support, which might be seen as the natural counter to LTS).

STS releases have a shorter support window, faster iteration and more frequent updates. It is needed for developers needing newest features and ok with no multi-year stability guarantees. It is intended to keep the platform evolving quickly. Since .NET 5, STS releases have odd version numbers.

STS releases have a typical lifetime around 18 months, and LTS around 3 years.

Software teams have different strategies: 1) anchor on LTS for stability, 2) use STS to ride the innovation wave. Microsoft keep odd numbered versions as STS and even numbered as LTS.

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