Is .NET Framework Class Library source code open?

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Chris - 19 Jan 2006 03:55 GMT

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

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Mattias Sjögren - 19 Jan 2006 06:26 GMT

Chris,

>Is there a place I can get source code of the class library?

Parts of it: http://msdn.microsoft.com/net/sscli/

Mattias

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Jon Skeet [C# MVP] - 19 Jan 2006 07:23 GMT

> >Is there a place I can get source code of the class library?
>
> Parts of it: http://msdn.microsoft.com/net/sscli/

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.

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Richard Grimes [MVP] - 29 Jan 2006 17:53 GMT

>>> Is there a place I can get source code of the class library?
>>
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> itself. In many places it may be very similar, but there's no
> guarantee.

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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Lloyd Dupont - 19 Jan 2006 06:45 GMT

Reflector is also quite helpfull.
http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet/

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Regards,
Lloyd Dupont

NovaMind development team
NovaMind Software
Mind Mapping Software
<www.nova-mind.com>

> Hi,
>
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
> Thanks in advance.
> Chris

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"Jeffrey Tan[MSFT]" - 19 Jan 2006 09:06 GMT

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

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Is .NET Framework Class Library source code open?

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