[Mono-devel-list] Embedding mcs into ASP.NET.

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hello,

    I have no plans in turning mcs into a reusable C# compiler library.
It would not only require too many changes, but those changes would make
the compiler much slower than it already is.

    I will not likely accept changes that would make the compiler
slower, and my interest in a loadable-compiler is so tiny, and the use
cases so minimal, that I doubt it is worth the effort.

    And the use cases that are interesting require a vastly different
parser, and a vastly different compilation model, so it is just not
worth the effort. 

    Is the hack that is currently used in the regression test suite and
the ASP.NET suboptimal as general purpose C# compiler?   Absolutely, it
is suboptimal for general purpose use.  It does however assist us
tremendously.

    Currently the API is just a faster version of execing the compiler,
so everything must be passed to it: files and command line options, and
proper locking around it must be added for multi-threaded operations.

   It is useful for our regression test suite, and it was a cute hack
for demo purposes, but it is not being included into the tree.

Miguel.