# eShopOnContainers - Microservices Architecture and Containers based Reference Application (**BETA state** - Visual Studio 2017 and CLI environments compatible)
Sample .NET Core reference application, powered by Microsoft, based on a simplified microservices architecture and Docker containers. <p>
**Note Visual Studio 2017 version required**: This is important as of November 2017. For working with Docker and docker-compose files (needed with eShopOnContainers), do not migrate to VS 2017 15.4 as it has a bug when using TAGs in the docker-compose files.
Please, either use VS 2017 15.35 or VS 2017 15.5 Preview (bug is fixed here) or later.
VS Preview installs next to your stable Visual Studio IDE, allowing you to use either independently.
Download of Preview here: https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/preview/
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**Note Visual Studio 2017 version required**: Please, use VS 2017 15.5 or later.
**Note for Pull Requests**: We accept pull request from the community. When doing it, please do it onto the DEV branch which is the consolidated work-in-progress branch. Do not request it onto Master, if possible.