See also
| Architecture | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Components | |||||||
| Standard Libraries |
| ||||||
| Implementations |
| ||||||
| Languages |
| ||||||
| Organizations | |||||||
 | This computer-programming-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
The Virtual Execution System (VES) is a run-time system of the Common Language Infrastructure CLI which provides an environment for executing managed code. It provides direct support for a set of built-in data types, defines a hypothetical machine with an associated machine model and state, a set of control flow constructs, and an exception handling model. To a large extent, the purpose of the VES is to provide the support required to execute the Common Intermediate Language CIL instruction set.
The Common Language Runtime (CLR) implements the VES as defined in the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) standard. Other notable implementations of the CLI such as Mono and Portable.NET include their own VES implementations. The .NET Micro Framework includes the .NET Micro Framework Interpreter as their VES implementation.
| | This computer-programming-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
The Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) is an open specification and technical standard originally developed by Microsoft and standardized by ISO and Ecma International that describes executable code and a runtime environment that allows multiple high-level languages to be used on different computer platforms without being rewritten for specific architectures. This implies it is platform agnostic. The .NET Framework, .NET and Mono are implementations of the CLI. The metadata format is also used to specify the API definitions exposed by the Windows Runtime.
The Common Language Runtime (CLR), the virtual machine component of Microsoft .NET Framework, manages the execution of .NET programs. Just-in-time compilation converts the managed code into machine instructions which are then executed on the CPU of the computer. The CLR provides additional services including memory management, type safety, exception handling, garbage collection, security and thread management. All programs written for the .NET Framework, regardless of programming language, are executed by the CLR. All versions of the .NET Framework include CLR. The CLR team was started June 13, 1998.
Common Intermediate Language (CIL), formerly called Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) or Intermediate Language (IL), is the intermediate language binary instruction set defined within the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) specification. CIL instructions are executed by a CLI-compatible runtime environment such as the Common Language Runtime. Languages which target the CLI compile to CIL. CIL is object-oriented, stack-based bytecode. Runtimes typically just-in-time compile CIL instructions into native code.
DotGNU is a decommissioned part of the GNU Project that aims to provide a free software replacement for Microsoft's .NET Framework by Free Software Foundation. Other goals of the project are better support for non-Windows platforms and support for more processors.
The Shared Source Common Language Infrastructure (SSCLI), previously codenamed Rotor, is Microsoft's shared source implementation of the CLI, the core of .NET. Although the SSCLI is not suitable for commercial use due to its license, it does make it possible for programmers to examine the implementation details of many .NET libraries and to create modified CLI versions. Microsoft provides the Shared Source CLI as a reference CLI implementation suitable for educational use.
Managed code is computer program code that requires and will execute only under the management of a Common Language Infrastructure (CLI); Virtual Execution System (VES); virtual machine, e.g. .NET Core, CoreFX, or .NET Framework; Common Language Runtime (CLR); or Mono. The term was coined by Microsoft.
Managed Extensions for C++ or Managed C++ is a now-deprecated set of language extensions for C++, including grammatical and syntactic extensions, keywords and attributes, to bring the C++ syntax and language to the .NET Framework. These extensions were created by Microsoft to allow C++ code to be targeted to the Common Language Runtime (CLR) in the form of managed code, as well as continue to interoperate with native code.
Metadata, in the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI), refers to certain data structures embedded within the Common Intermediate Language (CIL) code that describes the high-level structure of the code. Metadata describes all classes and class members that are defined in the assembly, and the classes and class members that the current assembly will call from another assembly. The metadata for a method contains the complete description of the method, including the class, the return type and all of the method parameters.
Defined by Microsoft for use in recent versions of Windows, an assembly in the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) is a compiled code library used for deployment, versioning, and security. There are two types: process assemblies (EXE) and library assemblies (DLL). A process assembly represents a process that will use classes defined in library assemblies. CLI assemblies contain code in CIL, which is usually generated from a CLI language, and then compiled into machine language at run time by the just-in-time compiler. In the .NET Framework implementation, this compiler is part of the Common Language Runtime (CLR).
C# is a general-purpose, multi-paradigm programming language encompassing static typing, strong typing, lexically scoped, imperative, declarative, functional, generic, object-oriented (class-based), and component-oriented programming disciplines.
In Microsoft's .NET Framework, the Common Type System (CTS) is a standard that specifies how type definitions and specific values of types are represented in computer memory. It is intended to allow programs written in different programming languages to easily share information. As used in programming languages, a type can be described as a definition of a set of values, and the allowable operations on those values.
The Framework Class Library (FCL) is a component of Microsoft's .NET Framework, the first implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI). In much the same way as Common Language Runtime (CLR) implements the CLI Virtual Execution System (VES), the FCL implements the CLI foundational Standard Libraries. As a CLI foundational class libraries implementation, it is a collection of reusable classes, interfaces and value types, and includes an implementation of the CLI Base Class Library (BCL).
The .NET Framework is a software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large class library called Framework Class Library (FCL) and provides language interoperability across several programming languages. Programs written for .NET Framework execute in a software environment named the Common Language Runtime (CLR). The CLR is an application virtual machine that provides services such as security, memory management, and exception handling. As such, computer code written using .NET Framework is called "managed code". FCL and CLR together constitute the .NET Framework.
Windows Runtime (WinRT) is a platform-agnostic application and component architecture first introduced with Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 in 2012. WinRT supports development in C++/WinRT, C++/CX, Rust/WinRT, Python via the winrt package, JavaScript-TypeScript, and CLI languages such as C# and Visual Basic (VB.NET). WinRT applications natively support both the x86 and ARM processors however native apps need to be separately compiled for each architecture, and may run inside a sandboxed environment to allow greater security and stability. WinRT components are designed with interoperability among multiple languages and APIs in mind, including native, managed and scripting languages.
Mono is a free and open-source .NET Framework-compatible software framework. Originally by Ximian, it was later acquired by Novell, and is now being led by Xamarin, a subsidiary of Microsoft and the .NET Foundation. Mono can be run on many software systems.
The Standard Libraries is a set of libraries included into the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) in order to encapsulate many common functions, such as file reading and writing, XML document manipulation, exception handling, application globalization, network communication, threading and reflection, which makes the programmer's job easier. It is much larger in scope than standard libraries for most other languages, including C++, and is comparable in scope and coverage to the standard libraries of Java.