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Microsoft Starts Working On an LLVM-Based Compiler For .NET
An anonymous reader writes Are the days of Microsoft's proprietary compiler over? Microsoft has announced they've started work on a new .NET compiler using LLVM and targets their CoreCLR — any C# program written for the .NET core class libraries can now run on any OS where CoreCLR and LLVM are supported. Right now the compiler only supports JIT compilation but AOT is being worked on along with other features. The new Microsoft LLVM compiler is called LLILC and is MIT-licensed.
The old CEO was shouting developers, developers and pushing them aside. This CEO doesn't make a peep but quietly bringing in the developers
I anticipate Stallman may have a heart attack soon.
karma: ouch!
I would like to believe that Microsoft really has turned a new corner with this more open strategy but it really is hard. We had to put up with so much rubbish from them over the years with Windows. As someone getting into web development it is also just blatantly obvious they tried to sabotage the adoption of a common standard for a long as possible to prevent the web becoming a cross-platform environment (IE6 I am looking at you). And then there was the whole changing Office pointlessly every two years so you had to buy a faster computer and pay them more money.
In the end I think they are just a business business. What I mean by that is they don't really subscribe to any ideology, vision or values other than just dominating at all cost. There is no rule that says they can't do that and plenty of other companies do, so I don't blame them, but in the end unless I start hearing from MS employees that there has been a wholesale change in culture I just think this openness stuff will only last until they get back to a dominate position again.
Having said that they do make some good dev tools and I won't turn my back on them. Because in the end the best thing to keep all the big companies in line is to ensure that none of them can get into a entirely dominate position, even if they promise us they won't be evil...
With LLVM using an intermediate representation of code (LLVM IR) and CLR another : MSIL, now called CIL, does that mean it goes C# -> LLVM bytecode -> .NET bytecode?, does the JIT does both steps at once, why doesn't that mean every single language with a LLVM target can now run on the CoreCLR?, was LLVM modified, was what's in my first question horribly wrong?
I think it's important to understand that the .NET JIT compiler should probably be considered more part of the .NET *runtime*, not necessarily part of the development platform for .NET. Since they want to port .NET to non-Microsoft operating systems, it makes sense to utilize LLVM to target those platforms for the JIT compiler rather than trying to write a new one from scratch. They needed a solid compiler to accompany their open source .NET platform for it to be a more complete open-source solution. Moreover, they've been extending Visual C++'s support for alternative platforms like Android, so it also makes sense that they'd be gaining expertise with LLVM.
It's probably not the end of their proprietary compiler, or even necessarily an indication they're thinking this way, but it may make more sense for them to utilize LLVM so as to target a larger number of platforms. They just recently rewrote their own .NET compiler a couple of years ago and released it as open source, so it's sort of odd to see a new project so soon. I'm guessing they figured it would be more work to extend that project to support all the platforms they're releasing CoreCLR for than using LLVM. Hard to say.
Also, there's still the native compiler, used for C/C++, and they've been sinking an enormous amount of development resources into making it compliant with the recent advances in those languages, so it also seems unlikely they're going to toss that work.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
...would beg to differ, with this fact from the COBOL wiki:
I would bet you that COBOL environments have had 1/10th, and perhaps 1/100th of the security problems as systems based on C.
There is a couple of open source projects doing this already: http://csnative.codeplex.com/ https://github.com/xen2/SharpL...
but nobody sensible develops .NET without Visual Studio. .NET is becoming true to its Java roots - write once (on a Windows box with Microsoft tools and you might as well use Outlook and Office too) run anywhere.
Did you have directory delete permissions?
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gnucobol
Xamarin is actually a VERY nice visual studio alternative. Not just for mobile either..
Still nothing to sneeze at.
I see new versions, libraries and more commitment to .NET everywhere... I didn't get the memo they were dropping it.
The IP of the MS update server must have been set to 0.0.0.0 in his hosts file. Mystery solved.
Dead ending VB6? Are you kidding? They had been saying that it was being phased out before VB6 was released. It's been dead for 17 years now. Give it a rest already. VB6 SUCKED.
Don't believe what Anonymous Cowards say. They are typically clueless. The next version of .NET should be released in the next 1-6 months (I'm guessing around 4).
Right now Microsoft has a JIT compiler running on a few platforms that translates .NET byte code into native code. Instead of reinventing the wheel and writing their own JIT compiler for a bunch other platforms they want to be able to run .NET code on, they are instead using something that already exists in the form of LLVM.
They aren't abandoning anything, just using LLVM instead of rolling their own JIT compiler on certain platforms where doing so makes sense.
Where do you see "their version of LLVM" here anywhere?
Tell that to the office team. When we get C# as the embedded language in office, maybe then VB can die. For now, it lives on like a zombie dragged, toothless, by an ex-lover through the programming landscape by its old OLE apis.
You're not. This is a tech website. Click the link near the box where you typed 'Google.com' marked 'Martha Stewart'
Im not arguing whether SecureBoot is good or bad, but you're making several false technical statements and Im not a big fan of arguments premised on BS.
Bootsector malware is (or was) exceedingly common on Windows XP and 7, to the point where I was regularly using tools like aswMBR and GMER to remove it. Thats why there are so many tools to detect it-- it was quite common. Sinowal, TDSS, Whistler, and several other rootkits infect the boot sector.
In any case Microsoft is not forcing OEMs to do anything. This is about a set of requirements that were given to get a Windows certification; one of them for Windows 8 was that OEMs were REQUIRED to allow other OSes to be installed. That requirement has been removed, which could have any of a number of rationale-- it is possible its for "lockin" reasons, but there are other valid reasons too, such as the rise of locked-down single-OS tablets. Microsoft continuing to have their "other OS" requirement could arguably alienate those OEMs, so they removed that requirement from their certification.
You have an obvious issue with Microsoft as a whole, but thats not a valid techical argument against a specific one of their technologies. Secureboot IMO has a lot of baggage, but it has the very real benefit that it can defeat a number of very real and very common rootkits like TDL3/4 which have historically been nightmarish to deal with.