Service Pack 1 for the developers' toolkit for the second edition of Microsoft's just-in-time high-level language interpreter for embedded equipment was released yesterday.

.NET Micro Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1 tackles an interesting issue for embedded systems: code signing. A device vendor may have any number of reasons why it would prefer for its binary code to be signed and authenticated: perhaps to serve the authenticated user, perhaps to help authenticate the firmware code, but most often to ensure that users can't change the code. Up until Windows XP Embedded, embedded systems developers looking to produce signed code had to encode their security catalogs in their program's binaries.

In the embedded space, where efficiency and small footprint are still critical issues, encasing security catalogs along with executable binaries in system firmware generates too much overhead for the final product, adding to its final cost. Microsoft sought to address this issue first with Windows XP Embedded, by building security catalogs into the operating system.

But like so many components in the Windows space - embedded or otherwise - things keep changing. Now, Microsoft says, .NET Micro Framework programmers can sign both their applications and the final firmware, hardening execution security on two layers.

Developers will also find a new font creation tool in the SDK that can help them convert a standard Windows TrueType font (not OpenType) in one point size, into a pixel-wise font image that embedded Windows and system firmware can more readily support. This way, your applications won't look just one generation removed from the output of the terminal from the movie "WarGames."

Service Pack 1 now requires users to have Visual Studio 2005 SP1 as a minimum development platform.

We got our first chance to experiment with .NET Micro Framework programming at a demonstration last June presented by Microsoft and EmbeddedFusion, which produced the prototype embedded system on which we learned to program handheld apps for the first time using C#.