The Common Intermediate Language (CIL) is "the" core language of .NET. Although .NET developers often use a high-level language (such as C# or VB .NET) to develop their systems, they can use CIL to do "anything" allowed by.NET specificationswhich is not the case for C# and VB .NET. Understanding how CIL works will provide you with a deep, language-independent insight into the core parts of .NET. This knowledge is essential for creating dynamic types, a powerful part of the .NET Framework.

In "CIL Programming: Under the Hood of .NET," Jason Bock offers an in-depth tutorial on programming in CIL. First, Bock discusses the basics of .NET assemblies and manifests. He then shows how to create assemblies in .NETincluding the ilasm directives and CIL opcodes, and how these are used to define assemblies, classes, field, methods, and method definitions. Bock also covers the ways in which C#, VB .NET, and other non-Microsoft languages emit CIL, and how they differ. Finally, he reveals how developers can create dynamic assemblies at runtime via the Emitter classes.

After reading this guide, you will gain a better understanding of CIL and how to program directly into it. "CIL Programming: Under the Hood of .NET" is a must-have on every .NET developer's desk Table of Contents Language Interoperability ilasm Directives and Attributes CIL Opcodes ilasm and CIL in Practice Debugging CIL .NET Languages and CIL Emitting Types Dynamic Proxies in .NET CIL Tips

Most .NET developers will use a high-level language, such as C# or VB .NET, to develop their systems. However, the core language of .NET is the Common Intermediate Language, or CIL. This language is the language of .NET-whatever is allowed by the .NET specifications can be done in CIL, and it can do much that C# and VB .NET cannot. Understanding how the CIL works will give .NET developers a deep, language-independent insight into the core parts of .NET. Furthermore, such knowledge is essential for creating dynamic types, a powerful part of the .NET Framework. In this book, Bock covers the essentials of programming the CIL. First, he discusses the basics of what .NET: assemblies are, how manifests fit into the picture, and much more. Bock then shows how to create assemblies in .NET-this will cover the ilasm directives and CIL opcodes, and how these are used to define assemblies, classes, field, methods, and method definitions. Bock also covers how C# and VB .NET and other non-MS languages emit CIL and how they differ. Finally, Bock shows how one can create dynamic assemblies at runtime via the Emitter classes.

Attributes are used to modify the runtime behavior of code in the .NET Framework. "Applied .NET Attributes" explores the application of .NET attributes and how developers can write custom attributes that provide the maximum level of code reuse and flexibility.

Attributed programming is a feature of .NET that is still relatively unexplored and unknown. Because attributes are used to modify the runtime behavior of code in the .NET Framework, their use is extremely important and will become even more important over time. This insightful guide covers the fundamentals of attributes, common .NET attributes, the use of custom attributes, and advanced techniques. Table of Contents Attribute Fundamentals Compile-time and Design-time Attributes Attributes and Runtime Behavior Building Custom Attributes Applying Custom Attributes

This is the first book to describe the recent significant changes to the .NET compilation process and demonstrate how .NET developers can use the new Compiler API to create compelling applications. As an open source compiler, the Compiler API now makes its code available for anyone to use. In this book, you'll get a concise, focused view of this tremendous resource for developers, who can now use any part of the platform implementation to their advantage in analyzing applications, improving code generation, and providing enforceable patterns, all under an OSS model. You will learn how to analyze your code for defects in a fast, clean manner never available before. You'll work with solutions and projects to provide automatic refactoring, and you'll discover how you can generate code dynamically to provide application implementations at runtime Having the Compiler API available opens a number of doors for .NET developers that were either simply not there before, or difficult to achieve. However, the API is vast, and this concise book provides a valuable roadmap to this new development environment. What You Will Learn: Understand how to generate, compile, and execute code for a number of scenarios How to create diagnostics and refactoring to help developers enforce conventions and design idioms Experiment with the compiler code base and see what can be done to influence the inner workings of the compilation pipeline Who This Book Is For:Experienced .NET developers, but detailed compiler knowledge is not necessary.