MSBUILD 2014, C# gets an ahead of time compiler to native code.

[Adam Wilson]

On Thu, 03 Apr 2014 01:45:16 -0700, Paulo Pinto <pjmlp at progtools.org>  
wrote:

> On Wednesday, 2 April 2014 at 21:43:05 UTC, Adam Wilson wrote:
>> On Wed, 02 Apr 2014 13:36:56 -0700, Orvid King <blah38621 at gmail.com>  
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 02 Apr 2014 15:24:00 -0500, Paulo Pinto <pjmlp at progtools.org>  
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> So it finally happened, C# gets an AOT compiler in addition to  
>>>> NGEN/JIT
>>>> as part of standard Visual Studio tools.
>>>>
>>>> http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/02/microsoft-updates-visual-studio-with-support-for-universal-projects-typescript-1-0-and-net-native-code-compilation/
>>>>
>>>> More information will be provided in the native sessions tomorrow and  
>>>> on
>>>> Friday.
>>>>
>>>> Posting this as it has direct implications into D's adoption.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Paulo
>>>>
>>>
>>> NGen's been around since .net 2.0, all the native compilation is that  
>>> they are talking about is just a few stubs and a nice pretty interface  
>>> for developers to work with. They do not currently intend to support  
>>> the AOT compilation for desktops, not in the way that D does at least.  
>>> Microsoft's AOT interface will also only ever support Windows. If  
>>> Apple is very lucky, they might support it on OSX, but it will never  
>>> make it to Linux. All in all, this news is basically no news :P It's  
>>> also been possible to AOT compile a .net program with mono on linux  
>>> and deploy it with no dependencies for quite a while now.
>>
>> Incorrect. It is a fully AOT compiler using the Visual C++ backend.  
>> NGen assemblies are incredibly fragile and machine specific, by using  
>> the VC++ backend they have eliminated that problem. It's not the Native  
>> C# language that has been talked about, but it is definitely a step in  
>> the right direction.
>
> Actually it is.
>
> http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Inside-NET-Native  @00:12:00
>
> --
> Paulo


Erm. No it's not. That project is called M#, it is a different language  
than C#. M# has a different but related set of keywords/syntax compared to  
C#. The similarity is that they both use the VC++ backend, but that is a  
more a case of technology re-use than any meaningful relationship.

-- 
Adam Wilson
GitHub/IRC: LightBender
Aurora Project Coordinator