Shared Source CLI Essentials

Microsoft's Shared Source CLI (code-named "Rotor") is the publicly available implementation of the ECMA Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) and the ECMA C# language specification. Loaded with three million lines of source code, it presents a wealth of programming language technology that targets developers interested in the internal workings of the Microsoft .NET Framework, academics working with advanced compiler technology, and people developing their own CLI implementations. The CLI, at its heart, is an approach to building software that enables code from many independent sources to co-exist and interoperate safely.

Shared Source CLI Essentials is a companion guide to Rotor's code. This concise and insightful volume provides a road map for anyone wishing to navigate, understand, or alter the Shared Source CLI code. This book illustrates the design principles used in the CLI standard and discusses the complexities involved when building virtual machines. Included with the book is a CD-ROM that contains all the source code and files.

After introducing the CLI, its core concepts, and the Shared Source CLI implementation, Shared Source CLI Essentials covers these topics:

• The CLI type system
  
• Component packaging and assemblies
  
• Type loading and JIT Compilation
  
• Managed code and the execution engine
  
• Garbage collection and memory management
  
• The Platform Adaptation Layer (PAL): a portability layer for Win32®, Mac OS® X, and FreeBSD

Written by members of the core Microsoft® team that designed the .NET Framework, Shared Source CLI Essentials is for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of what goes on under the hood of the .NET runtime and the ECMA CLI. Advanced .NET programmers, researchers, the academic community, and CLI implementers who have asked hard questions about the .NET Framework will find that this behind-the-scenes look at the .NET nucleus provides them with excellent resources from which they can extract answers.

Table of Contents

Preface 

1. Introducing the CLI Component Model
2. Getting Started with Rotor
3. Using Types to Describe Components
4. Extracting Types from Assemblies
5. Synthesizing Components
6. Regulating the Execution Engine
7. Managing Memory Within the Execution Engine
8. Interlude: Enabling Component Integration with Metadata
9. The Platform Adaptation Layer
A. A Quick Tour of Rotor
B. Building Rotor
C. Porting Rotor
D. Rotor Macrology
Index