Is .NET Framework Class Library source code open?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chris
  • Start date Start date
C

Chris

Hi,

I am interested in learning how .net class library works for diagnosing some
strange behavior in my application.
Is there a place I can get source code of the class library?
I worked on Java for many years, what really helped me is to learn the
under-hood mechanism of the JDK classes.

Thanks in advance.
Chris
 
Hi Chris,

Thanks for your post.

Currently, the .Net Framework class library is not open source, although
downloading and using it will be free. However, Microsoft has maintained an
open source implementation specification for .Net1.0, which is called
Shared Source CLI, for more information, please refer to the link below:
"Shared Source CLI Provides Source Code for a FreeBSD Implementation of
..NET"
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/02/07/SharedSourceCLI/

Additionally, if you are only curious with .Net FCL, you can use the tool
Reflector. Reflector did a good decompilation regarding .Net FCL
assemblies, and we can view the FCL code in C#, VB.net, IL etc...

Hope it helps

Best regards,
<you alias>
Microsoft Online Partner Support
Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
This posting is provided "as is" with no warranties and confers no rights.
 
Jon said:
Note that although that's *an* implementation of a lot of the class
libraries, it's not the same implementation which is used in .NET
itself. In many places it may be very similar, but there's no
guarantee.
Click to expand...

Of course, if you compare practically any class in the framework library
in SSCLI with the code returned from Reflector for 1.1 of the framework,
the only difference is that the SSCLI has useful comments in it ;-)

Reflection and metadata means that the framework library is essentially
'open', but to *really* understand why classes are implemented the way
they are you need the developer's comments. That's what makes SSCLI so
useful :-)

Richard
 
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