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'dotnet watch' incompatible with Hot Reload for old frameworks

  • Article

.NET 9 introduces a change that requires dotnet watch to launched with Hot Reload disabled for projects targeting .NET 5 or earlier versions.

Previous behavior

Previously, dotnet watch automatically disabled Hot Reload when used with projects targeting .NET 5 or earlier.

New behavior

Starting in .NET 9, an error is reported when dotnet watch is launched without --no-hot-reload for projects targeting .NET 5 or earlier versions. The error is similar to:

Hot Reload based watching is only supported in .NET 6.0 or newer apps.

Version introduced

.NET 9 RC 1

Type of breaking change

This change is a behavioral change.

Reason for change

The internal architecture of the dotnet watch tool underwent significant improvements. Preserving behavior for out-of-support .NET versions did not warrant increasing the complexity of the new implementation.

Pass --no-hot-reload to dotnet watch on the command line, or update your project to target net6.0 or later (using the TargetFramework property).

Affected APIs

N/A