Shared Source CLI Essentials

Summary

We will have much more to say about the data-driven approach to execution used in the CLI in later chapters. For now, it is important to note that metadata-rich types are the abstraction that makes this approach possible.

The type system of the CLI is designed to promote maximal flexibility in a language-agnostic approach to component integration. By creating completely self-descriptive components and preserving their metadata as the executable representation, no intrinsic binding to the underlying platform is created until the JIT compiler is run. Using this approach, a single executable can adapt to a variety of platforms, environments, and system versions over time. Armed with more intimate knowledge about how this is possible in the type system of the CLI, we can now turn our attention to how types are packaged and distributed as stored component assemblies.