Codename Roslyn project it’s a new type of compiler that will bring the flexibility of dynamic languages to C# and Visual Basic. Roslyn will be released as CTP (Community Technology Preview) by researchers from Microsoft.
Here at SoftElegance we are really interested in such initiative. “This project is about revising what compilers do”… We believe that bringing flexibility of dynamic languages to C# and VB it’s great idea. And idea of “Compiler-as-a-Service” also looks not so bad.
Here is some comments of Anders Hejlsberg about Roslyn project, he said at BUILD…
First of all thanks to Joab Jackson for the article “Microsoft previews Compiler-as-a-Service software”
So what do we know about Roslyn project:
“It’s about opening the compiler and making all that information available so the developer can harness all of this knowledge”. Roslyn is a compiler for C# and VB with a set of APIs that developers can use to fine-tune their code. It adds dynamic typing to the statically typed C#, allowing developers to add objects and new variables to a program on the fly. IMHO it’s the most important new features that was taken from other dynamic languages, Python first of all.
Hejlsberg demonstrated a few of the program’s advanced functions. He showed off a command line interface that allows users to enter code that can be run directly against the compiler. Scripts can also be run against the compiler, which can be useful in generating information about a program being compiled.
We are attended in Roslyn project and will keep you informed about it in the future.
Today MS has announced “Roslyn” CTP:
The Roslyn CTP installs on Visual Studio 2010 SP1. It includes previews of all of the Roslyn APIs for both Visual Basic and C#, samples of using the APIs, and a C# Interactive window.