Hello, > We are pleased to announce the first public release of the RAIL project. The RAIL > package consists in a Runtime Assembly Instrumentation Library for the .NET > platform. With RAIL it's possible to: > > -- Read and present the contents of an assembly in an object-oriented way to > the programmer > -- Easily change references to fields, properties, methods and classes > -- Iterate and change IL code > -- Insert prologues and epilogues in method bodies > -- Replace the access to fields by methods > -- Selectively copy parts of an assembly
I find this tool very interesting, still downloading the source code, but your presentation includes some hints of what is possible to do. Recently at the Mono BOF in the PDC, someone asked about building a tool that would create a self-contained, minimalistic program. The idea is to create standalone applications, the equivalent of "static linking" the code into a program. So a small program that only writes Console.WriteLine would pull all of the dependencies of System.Console into the resulting assembly. Seems like some of that might be possible with your code. Once you have a "self-contained" assembly, at least with Mono, you can embed that into a statically linked runtime, so you can distribute the application as a single executable without having any external dependencies. Another use of this sort of tool might be to remove unneeded cruft for embedded system scenarios: find everything you need, and copy that into a set of new assemblies that you can deploy into a small machine. The above has the advantage that for embedded system developers, they do not have to code against a subset that has been determined in advance. Instead they can use the full framework, and only the pieces they use get actually copied into the resulting system (some assemblies *might* be better off with `tiny' implementations, but thats a different story). Miguel. =================================== This list is hosted by DevelopMentor® http://www.develop.com NEW! ASP.NET courses you may be interested in: 2 Days of ASP.NET, 29 Sept 2003, in Redmond http://www.develop.com/courses/2daspdotnet Guerrilla ASP.NET, 13 Oct 2003, in Boston http://www.develop.com/courses/gaspdotnet View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://discuss.develop.com
