5 ms·

.NET is starting to look nice on Linux and macOS. I'm very disappointed that AOT compilation has apparently fallen on the wayside, though. CoreRT was supposed

.NET is starting to look nice on Linux and macOS. I'm very disappointed that AOT compilation has apparently fallen on the wayside, though. CoreRT was supposed to bring full AOT to C#, and that project is still in alpha with a disclaimer saying there are no plans to make it production-ready. LLILC, the compiler that targets LLVM, is also not production ready. Anyone know what's going on?

mnmr 6y ago
AOT is still on the roadmap, but has been pushed to .NET 6.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  And in this case "pushed to .NET 6" doesn't mean "not working" or anything, just not production-ready. The AOT implementation in Mono is robust and is being adapted for .NET Core, which requires changes and improvements. Not to mention the introduction of new platforms - supporting targets like Apple Silicon and WASM takes additional work.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    As per discussions on Github it remains to be seen if Mono AOT is still the name of the game, or if CoreRT will take its place, or whatever.
manigandham 6y ago
Officially it's been pushed back. The priority has been the unification of all the different runtimes and platforms first, which is coming with the big .NET 5 release.
- atombender 6y ago
  Is there a document describing this plan? Will this replace .NET Core, CoreRT, etc.? As someone who isn't a .NET developer, the sheer proliferation of runtimes and platforms is super confusing, and I can never remember what's what between, .NET, .NET Native, .NET Framework, .NET Core, Mono, CoreRT, etc. If this is getting cleaned up, that's great news.
  - spaetzleesser 6y ago
    As far as .NET goes, MS has a long history of confusing messaging. As soon as something gets traction it either gets obsoleted or renamed. They would do themselves a big favor if they made it easier for people to understand the different versions.
    - tasogare 6y ago
      > As soon as something gets traction it either gets obsoleted or renamed. This is sadly totally true.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Not only .NET, I am really pissed how C++/CX got replaced with C++/WinRT, without any effort to provide tooling with similar capabilities. So instead of a C++ with C# like tooling for doing UWP stuff, now one gets to edit IDL files without any kind of support (you could be using Notepad for what they care), and then you have to manually copy/merge C++ files after being generated. And on the .NET side .NET Native was looking to be how version 1.0 should have been all along, and now has an uncertain future. Finally with Reunion, when going regularly on their issues, it seems to be turning into a major reboot, porting what they can into Windows 7 like stack, leave UWP as an improved COM runtime, and pretend that everything else post Windows 8 outside Win32 never happened.
  - manigandham 6y ago
    Here's the .NET 5 announcement which wraps up everything: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-net-5/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-net-5/ .NET windows/desktop framework stopped at version 4.8 and .NET Core has spent 4 years incrementing to version 3, so .NET 5 is a merger of everything into a single framework again. Mono will still exist since it's used by Xamarin for mobile and Unity for games. AOT is mentioned in the article and comments, and there's also this big thread in the CoreRT repo if you want to see more discussions: https://github.com/dotnet/corert/issues/7200 https://github.com/dotnet/corert/issues/7200
    - 6y ago

mnmr 6y ago

AOT is still on the roadmap, but has been pushed to .NET 6.

kevingadd 6y ago
And in this case "pushed to .NET 6" doesn't mean "not working" or anything, just not production-ready. The AOT implementation in Mono is robust and is being adapted for .NET Core, which requires changes and improvements. Not to mention the introduction of new platforms - supporting targets like Apple Silicon and WASM takes additional work.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  As per discussions on Github it remains to be seen if Mono AOT is still the name of the game, or if CoreRT will take its place, or whatever.

manigandham 6y ago

Officially it's been pushed back. The priority has been the unification of all the different runtimes and platforms first, which is coming with the big .NET 5 release.

atombender 6y ago
Is there a document describing this plan? Will this replace .NET Core, CoreRT, etc.? As someone who isn't a .NET developer, the sheer proliferation of runtimes and platforms is super confusing, and I can never remember what's what between, .NET, .NET Native, .NET Framework, .NET Core, Mono, CoreRT, etc. If this is getting cleaned up, that's great news.
- spaetzleesser 6y ago
  As far as .NET goes, MS has a long history of confusing messaging. As soon as something gets traction it either gets obsoleted or renamed. They would do themselves a big favor if they made it easier for people to understand the different versions.
  - tasogare 6y ago
    > As soon as something gets traction it either gets obsoleted or renamed. This is sadly totally true.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Not only .NET, I am really pissed how C++/CX got replaced with C++/WinRT, without any effort to provide tooling with similar capabilities. So instead of a C++ with C# like tooling for doing UWP stuff, now one gets to edit IDL files without any kind of support (you could be using Notepad for what they care), and then you have to manually copy/merge C++ files after being generated. And on the .NET side .NET Native was looking to be how version 1.0 should have been all along, and now has an uncertain future. Finally with Reunion, when going regularly on their issues, it seems to be turning into a major reboot, porting what they can into Windows 7 like stack, leave UWP as an improved COM runtime, and pretend that everything else post Windows 8 outside Win32 never happened.
- manigandham 6y ago
  Here's the .NET 5 announcement which wraps up everything: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-net-5/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-net-5/ .NET windows/desktop framework stopped at version 4.8 and .NET Core has spent 4 years incrementing to version 3, so .NET 5 is a merger of everything into a single framework again. Mono will still exist since it's used by Xamarin for mobile and Unity for games. AOT is mentioned in the article and comments, and there's also this big thread in the CoreRT repo if you want to see more discussions: https://github.com/dotnet/corert/issues/7200 https://github.com/dotnet/corert/issues/7200
  - 6y ago