[Mono-list] Embedding mono/C# in a file format...

[Jonathan Pryor]

On Sun, 2009-01-04 at 12:15 -0800, SniperSlap wrote:
> Jonathan Pryor wrote:
> > Google up:
> >   - System.CodeDom
...
> I noticed after writing my initial message that Mono 2.2 is going to have
> the "C# Evaluation API (Mono.CSharp.Evaluator)".
> How does this compare to the ideas you mentioned?

System.CodeDom would allow using any language with a CodeDom provider,
which includes VB.NET, C#, IronPython, etc.  It's usually not difficult
to write such a provider, and is required for ASP.NET support.

Mono.CSharp.Evaluator is specific to C#.  So that's one major-ish
difference.

The other major difference is output: System.CodeDom will produce IL
which you would use normally (save to disk, load & execute, etc.).
Mono.CSharp.Evaluator will execute immediately and return whatever the
evaluated expression returns.

So you could design things to make them do similar things, but how
they're more or less completely different.

>   If this is going to be in
> the mono namespace, I'd assume this is not something supported by any MS
> .NET runtimes...

Also true; it's specific to Mono's C# compiler, though nothing should
stop you from embedding Mono's C# compiler into your app for use (as
it's MIT/X11 licensed).

> Is there any way to pre-compile the IL code and include it in an XML file?

Base64-encode the binary and use Assembly.Load(byte[]).

Not sure why you'd want to do this, but it should work. :-)

 - Jon