Welcome to CodeRefractor, an experimental project which compiles MSIL/CIL opcodes to C++ and after this it automatically generates a native (binary) version of the code.
The idea of using this convertor is to make possible that the MSIL code to run on machines that do not have Mono or .Net codes and is using as much as possible C++ paradigms.
Some questions I think that may occur for an interested reader and their answers
Is CodeRefractor a code-translator?
By a code-translator meaning that it translates the operation opcodes to C++ directly. The exact answer is no, it is a full compiler which uses an intermediary representation.
In a very brief steps the code, CodeRefractor does the following:
- reads an .Net assembly using reflection
- starts from the entry point (Main method) and starts reading CIL bytecodes/operations
- these operations are rewritten in an intermediary representation
- the intermediary representation is (optionally) optimized which simplify simple expressions and redundancies
- the intermediary representation is written into C++
- a C++ compiler is invoked and is linked with a static library that have some simple operations made into it and generates the executable form
This native executable should behave as much as possible as the original .Net application.
Most similar projects that do similar design are mostly in Java world:
- Excelsior JET
- GCJ
- RoboVM
- Mono --full-aot mode
Read more: Code Refractor - MSIL/CIL to Native
QR: 