New release of C# Compiler As a Service

I thought some people might be interested in this:

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-24.html

It also has a Silverlight port: https://github.com/praeclarum/runcs

I wouldn't have thought to have used a c# compiler as a shell, but I can see the novelty in the idea.

-Josh

It's very useful for prototyping. Think complex LINQ statements.

Mono's C# compiler is actually written in C#, by the way. The advantages of not having to bootstrap a language.

Reading de Icaza's blog, it really amazes me the places that CLR/CLI has been taken by these open source folks. And what is really great is that it doesn't detract from what is being done by the mothership in redmond, but rather it complements. In a world where you don't know what tomorrow will bring, this partnership seems to have really hedged that implied risk, in the most pleasant way.

-Josh

Hasn't the Mono C# compiler been written in C# for a long time? According to the blog Mono has had compiler-as-a-service since 2008 but it couldn't run on Windows.

For prototyping and complex LINQ expressions you need look no further than LINQPad.

@exoteric:

Mono's compiler has always been written in C#. It became self-hosting ~10 years ago.

Ten years ago? That's before .Net 1.0 was released.

@Sven Groot:

I'm pretty sure Miguel started Mono when .NET was still in beta. Regardless, that's what the approximation symbol (~) is for.

Per: http://www.mono-project.com/CSharp_Compiler 

"MCS was able to parse itself on April 2001, MCS compiled itself for the first time on December 28 2001. MCS became self hosting on January 3rd, 2002."

So I was 9 months off. You want to fight about it?

"Well actually..."

@Bass: would love to be able to use lambdas in Immediate Mode while debugging, does MonoDevelop have something like that yet?

Dec 2001?  I suppose we were all to busy on 2.0 betas during Mono's June 20 2004 release. How time does fly.

I've tried the repl shell that the mono guys released some time ago, but it had some major quirks back then.

Compiler as a Service is gonna be huge - think about it: never again powershell with its -eq, -gt syntax and no more painful sharepoint package registration, debug and continue for x64, but best of all an immediate window for fast prototyping like f#, Visual Studio macros in c# ahh, the possibilities are endless...