p4ulor / AVE

Content for the college subject Virtual Execution Environments. Covers reflection, meta programming with IL, metadata, custom attributes, etc, using C# (and dotnet). Done in the summer of 2021

Understanding virtual execution environments using C#

Homeworks and class exercises from the discipline Virtual Execution Environments

TPC list Exercises 1 2 and 3 about reflection Lesson 38 exercise about reflection, interfaces and delegates

This discipline covers the following subjects and questions:

• What is a computational/software environment AKA virtual execution environments AKA software framework
• The problems that Virtual execution environments solve
• What is an assembly and how to get a representation of a type or component(a .dll) and exploring it
• IL(intermediate language) + metadata = (software) component
• What is metadata for?
• The reflection API, which when in effect(in pratice) it's called introspection(which uses metadata)
• Creating our own metadata with custom attributes
• Programming in IL
• Understanding what types(reference types and value types) are how they are used during the execution of a program
• Sequences and Delegates
• Generics

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How to navigate and open the projects

Each folder that has the .vscode folder should be opened as a project

Open the folder and type in the explorer address bar: cmd

In the console, write: code .

Or just drag and release the folder into VSC and it will open the project

Inside each folder that contains a .csproj file for the project. Run this command in console:

• dotnet build

Which will compile(AKA build) the .dll files and other stuff which, are files of larger size and shouldn't be placed in repos.

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Create projects using:

dotnet new operation -o FolderName

Example of operations used:

• console (creates project with main method)
• classlib (creates project intended to just contain utility classes, no main method)
• xunit (creates project intended to run tests on)

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IDE used: VSC. It's fast, simple and very good.

Extensions recommended for this repo using VSC:

• Name: C# IL Viewer Id: josephwoodward.vscodeilviewer Description: A C# IL Viewer for Visual Studio Code Version: 0.0.1 Publisher: Joseph Woodward VS Marketplace Link: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=josephwoodward.vscodeilviewer

• Name: C# Id: ms-dotnettools.csharp Description: C# for Visual Studio Code (powered by OmniSharp). Version: 1.23.12 Publisher: Microsoft VS Marketplace Link: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-dotnettools.csharp

• Name: vscode-pdf Id: tomoki1207.pdf Description: Display pdf file in VSCode. Version: 1.1.0 Publisher: tomoki1207 VS Marketplace Link: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=tomoki1207.pdf

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Extra program installed: ildasm.exe

It's used to consult metadata and the IL code of .dll files.