This is the best list I found that answered a few of my questions:
http://www.dotnet-tricks.com/Tutorial/mvc6/5R9E190514-Introduction-to-ASP.NET-vNext-and-MVC-6.html
Here is a summary of the 10 features they covered:
- Cloud optimized versions of MVC, Web API, Web Pages, SignalR, and EF
- MVC, Web API and Web Pages merged into one framework (MVC6)
- No dependency on System.Web (HttpContext object graph drops from ~30k/req to ~2k/req)
- New project extension
project.json
to list all dependencies and aStartup
class that replaces global.asax - Cloud ready by design. Session state and caching adjust behavior depending on hosting environment.
- Host agnostic
- True Side-by-side deployment. Just upload dependencies to the bin directory without affecting other apps on same server.
- Dependency injection built in
- Roslyn compiler for dynamic code compilation. Edit code and see changes without having to rebuild
- Open source and cross-platform (can work on Mono, Mac, Linux, etc)