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SharpMap/SharpMap
An easy-to-use mapping library for use in web and desktop applications
SharpMap is a server-side GIS rendering library for .NET that draws map images from shapefiles, PostGIS, SQL Server Spatial, and WMS sources. It targets desktop WinForms apps and ASP.NET WebForms/MVC sites that need to render static map tiles or images server-side. If you're building a .NET app that needs to display geographic data without shipping a full GIS stack, this is what existed before everyone moved to Leaflet+tile servers.
Broad data source support out of the box — shapefiles, PostGIS, SQL Server Spatial, MapInfo, WMS client, and GDAL raster all work without third-party glue. The provider model is genuinely extensible; writing a custom data provider is straightforward. It ships working WinForms controls, not just a rendering pipeline, so desktop GIS tools can use it end-to-end. The examples directory is unusually thorough — WMS server, routing, heat maps, UTFGrid, projection transforms — you can see real usage patterns rather than toy demos.
The project is effectively unmaintained — last meaningful activity was years ago, CI runs on Travis which has been dead for open source since 2021, and the README hasn't been touched in that time either. It targets .NET Framework-era WebForms (`.aspx`, `.ashx`), not .NET Core or modern ASP.NET; getting it running on .NET 6+ is a porting project, not a NuGet install. There's no concept of vector tiles or async rendering — it produces bitmap images, so any interactive map still needs a separate JS mapping library on top. Coordinate system handling leans heavily on external DLLs that have their own native binary dependency problems on non-Windows hosts.