OpenEuphoria

Re: What Is A Managed DLL?

• Posted by Matt Lewis <matthewwalkerlewis at gmail.com> Nov 21, 2006
• 559 views

Louis Bryant wrote:
> 
> Hi. What is a managed dll and why do we need them? How does the .net framework
> make programming any easier? Is that just for c/c++? Euphoria seems to do that
> on its own. I am new at this all and just wondered if I could get more
> understanding.
> Hopefully, Euphoria wil never depend on managed code. It just sounds difficult
> and limiting. Thanks!

The .NET framework actually has lots of different languages that are targeted
at it.  The main language that MS pushes for it is C#.  .NET is basically
a virtual machine that executes Common Language Runtime assembly language.
You can think of it as being somewhat like the backend for euphoria, which
executes euphoria IL (intermediate language) code.  Or what the Perl6 
people are trying to achieve with Parrot.  I've actually got a semi-working 
version of ooeu that runs under .NET.

Managed code is code that only uses CLR code.  It's possible for managed
code to use unmanaged code (i.e., normal dlls).  The managed aspect actually
makes it easier to share code between languages, since everything is built
to a specific standard, and is designed to be compatible.

Matt