Autofac 2.5 Released

Autofac 2.5 is now available on the project site and via NuGet. The new version includes a range of great contributions.

After incubation as an external project, Windows Phone 7 now joins ranks of officially-supported targets (just install the Autofac package via NuGet and you’re up and running!) For some tips on getting started see Brendan Kowitz’s notes.

The new release is highly-compatible with Autofac 2.4 (best used with the VS2010 compiler when targeting .NET 3.5.)

Included changes are:

• Issue 329 – types are filtered by compatibilty before invoking key mapping functions when scanning assemblies
• RegisterAssemblyTypes(...).WithMetadataFrom<T>() simplifies extraction of metadata from attribute properties
• Module.ThisAssembly simplifies implementation of modules that scan their own assembly
• Issue 333 – enable RegisterAssemblyTypes(...).PreserveExistingDefaults()
• Windows Phone 7 and 7.1 support
• Issue 312 – allow ContainerBuilder.Update() on the ComponentRegistry of any
  ILifetimeScope without affecting the parent scope
• Issue 327 – allow autowiring of enum properties
• Issue 319 – support list and dictionary literals in XML configuration
• Issue 330 – corrections to generic type constraint checking where the constraint type is an interface
• Issue 331 – fix build warnings and runtime issues using Moq integration
• Introduced ContainerBuildOptions to control invocation of IStartable.Start() under unit tests
• Container.Empty is now a property rather than a field (protection from inadvertent updates
• Removed broken/obsolete examples from source tree (better examples are available elsewhere online)
• Host configuration features for AutofacHostFactory in WCF integration
• ComponentRegistry.Register() is now safe for use under multiple threads
• Issue 227 – breaking change additional options (and enum rather than boolean parameter) for PropertiesAutowired()
• Additional web abstractions are now registered by the MVC3 AutofacWebTypesModule
• Issue 311 – fixed potential lifetime issues when injecting into MVC filter attributes
• Tightened up behavior when correct constructor to use under reflection activator is ambiguous (now throws rather than choosing nondeterministically)
• Issue 309 – fixed some issues in TypeExtensions.IsClosedTypeOf()
• Improved exception messages

Many thanks to the Autofac project team and collaborators across the web for making this release happen!