Talk:Microsoft Intermediate Language

Merging[edit]

Merge D. Wo. 18:40, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Merge --Casiotone 19:04, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Oppose - The two topics are similar, yes, but differ greatly in scope. The CIL is the Ecma International specification; MSIL is Microsoft's implementation of that specification. There could quite easily be many other implementations of the CIL specification in addition to MSIL. Think of it as the difference between the Common Language Infrastructure and the Common Language Runtime BurntSky 01:08, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There isn't a lot of microsoft specific information in this article, at least not at the moment. I suggest that for the time being, the articles should be merged and any microsoft specifics can go under a seciton MSIL in the CIL article. If it turns out to get large enough, it can be split off as it's own article. 129.241.107.147 19:38, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Merge - CIL is more correct. Either merge with CIL, or move most of the (non-specific) MSIL bits to CIL Jonmmorgan 00:10, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Oppose - MSIL is Microsofts implementation of CIL. Their MSIL tools and their MSIL implementation of the CIL specs should remain unmerged with the CIL page. Tarlano 10:42, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Merge - MSIL used to be the general term for the IL used for .NET, but has been replaced by the term CIL with its standardization. Parts specific to the Microsoft implementation should go under an MSIL section in the CIL article. Chip Zero 18:20, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Merge In Microsoft's own literature, they do not distinguish between "CIL" and "MSIL." This is from C# and the .NET 2.0 Platform from Microsoft Press:

"During the development of .NET, the official term for IL [Intermediate Language] was Microsoft intermediate language (MSIL). However with the final release of .NET, the term was changed to common intermediate language (CIL). Thus, as you read the .NET literature, understand that IL, MSIL, and CIL are all describing the same exact entity. In keeping with the current terminology, I will use the abbreviation 'CIL' throughout this text."

Unless you want to say that Microsoft is being completely duplicitous here (unfortunately not such an absurd notion) I don't see how there can be any more discussion on the issue. Microsoft doesn't distinguish between CIL and MSIL, and neither should Wikipedia. SanchoPanza 14:05, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose largely based on convenience to the reader. If merged, then MSIL would presumably become a redirect for CIL. But then the reader who searched on MSIL would need to scan the CIL article to find out why the redirect was performed. Instead, MSIL should be be a very short article that explains the distinction and provides a link to CIL. Leotohill 22:34, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Merge. It's seems uncalled for to me to break every implementation out into a separate article. CIL and MSIL should be treated in one article. There *are* other implementations--Mono and Rotor, for example--and I would just like to see all of them treated on one page. All the strategies for optimizing the runtime can be treated in a general sense there, since the specifics change with different releases of different VM's at different times. No one disputes that Microsoft has a specific implementation of the ECMA standard, but I don't think Wikipedia should have a separate article on each individual implementation. If so, then we should have a separate article on each IDE, for example, and that's getting to be too commercial and too product-oriented to be appropriate for an encyclopedia.Harborsparrow 18:27, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's done. I just copy-pasted into CIL so please fix any MSIL-specific things there. Tocharianne 00:49, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Platform independence[edit]

Promoters tout its potential to accomplish platform independence and runtime safety, but as of 2003 it only works on MS Windows. Has there been a change since then? Any GNU or Macintosh, for example? --Uncle Ed 19:39, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See Mono Project. Tulkolahten 21:20, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Even with Mono and Rotor proving that MSIL 'could' run on non-Windows, the fact that Microsoft hasn't pushed to make it run on other OS's doesn't bother a lot of people in view of what MSIL and .NET did accomplish--making all 36+ versions of Windows alike to a programmer. Without .NET, 'MS Windows' is 36+ different operating systems: C and C++ Windows programmers must test for the presence of a library on each operating system before using it, and then provide workarounds if it is missing. By making all versions of Windows alike to a programmer, Microsoft for the first time, with .NET, achieved making 'Windows' like one OS. Microsoft also gained a formidable a cross-language interworking ability, which has not yet occurred as much for the JVM (although it's finally beginning to happen with Jython and now JRuby et al.). This all seems to get lost in the emotional rhetoric surrounding the alleged cross-platform 'failure' of .NET.Harborsparrow 17:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]