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Command-line Trivia

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So many people have wondered why the C# compiler isn't smarter about some of it's command-line arguments.  Here's a summary of the type of questions I hope to answer in this post:

  • Why doesn't the C# compiler accept /reference:*.dll?
  • Why doesn't the C# compiler accept /addmodule:*.*?
  • Why doesn't the C# compiler just automatically add all the dependencies? Or if I'm only using a.dll, why do I have to reference b.dll?
  • Why do I have to add /reference:MyAssembly.dll, but not /reference:System.dll
  • Why doesn't the C# compiler accept /resource:*.resources?

Basically it's because of our premise that our developers/users are smart and don't like too much black magic going on under the covers.  We thought that developers would always want to know exactly what their dependencies are.  By forcing you to put each dependency on the command-line you have to think up front what your dependencies are.  Wild-cards do not help that.

The second issue arises from lookup rules.  In the native world, C/C++ programmers use the LIB environment variable to tell the linker where to go looking for LIB files (The C# compiler also uses the environment variable to find references).  Classic VB users would just open the add component dialog box, which basically walked HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT for all registered COM/ActiveX type libraries, objects and interfaces.  The down-side to the VB model was that developers often had no way of knowing which components he or she had rights to redistribute.  So that is one reason why the C# compiler never looks in the GAC for references.  Our model is “GAC is for runtime, use someplace else for compile-time“.  That's why the framework SDK installs assemblies like System.dll into 2 places: the GAC for runtime and the SDK directory for compile-time.

Does anybody really fully understand fusion's complicated lookup/binding rules? Especially when you throw in machine, user, application and publisher policy?  I don't.  Every time they're explained to me, they all seem to have good reasons and make sense for applications, but not for developers.  Instead we went with a classical path-based lookup.  MSDN clearly explains which directories the compiler will search and in what order in this article.

As far as assembly dependencies go the compiler possibly could do better, but it would end up having rules very similar to fusion.  The simplest problem is that there is no guaranteed relationship between an assembly name and the actual file name for that assembly.  I think that's one reason why fusion has such complex rules.  Thus to look up second order dependencies the compiler would either need to rely on fusion (which we already decided was bad) or put in some black magic of our own.  The decision was to put the developer in change and force them to declare exactly which files to use as dependencies.

For module dependencies it gets even harder.  With module dependencies I suppose we could do slightly better.  However multi-file assemblies are extremely rare and the metadata doesn't help us out as much as we'd like.  Now unlike assembly references, module references actually contain the filename.  The problem arises because the ModuleRef table also stores other stuff, like all the filenames from DllImportAttributes.  Thus there's no easy way to determine the difference between a dependent managed module and a native dependency that's not part of the assembly (like kernel32.dll for instance).  Also when building an assembly it is possible that not all the modules will be referenced.  So again we decided to put the programmer in change and make you explicitly list all of them.

Many of you have noticed that you never need to explicitly reference Microsoft assemblies like mscorlib.dll or System.dll.  The main reason I guess is because we're self-centered.  Well I guess not completely because we do have some almost good reasons.

First I'll get to mscorlib.dll.  In case you haven't noticed there a few types the compiler just needs regardless of what you're compiling.  These include (this is by no means a complete list) System.Int32, System.Object, System.String, System.Delegate, System.Enum, etc.  All of these are in mscorlib.dll.  Because these always have to be there, everybody (except those actually building mscorlib.dll) need to reference mscorlib.dll, so the compiler tries to save you a little redundancy by always implicitly referencing mscorlib.dll.  If you don't want it, you have to turn it off with /nostdlib.

Now for System.dll and it's friends.  Here is where i think we might have gone a little overboard.  Even though we wanted you the developer to have total control of your dependencies, it became a little unwieldy to compile simple winforms apps from the command-line.  At one point we had up-wards of 40 different assemblies you needed to reference!  Since we already had response files we thought we make a 'default' response file that just referenced all of those assemblies, since everybody wants them (sarcasm intended).  So we created a default response file that always gets used in every command-line compilation unless turned off with /noconfig.  Please go look in your runtime directory right now at csc.rsp (it's right next to csc.exe).  Please take some time to edit it to suite your needs, it can save you a lot of typing!  Go ahead and add you favorite references, and remove the ones you don't want.  Also feel free to add flags to adjust the default command-line options.  You can always override them by using the opposite flag on the actual command-line.

The resources question is just going to have to wait for another day.  I think it really is worthy of it's own post.

--Grant

Comments

  • Anonymous
    July 09, 2004
    If you edit csc.rsp, the C# compiler will behave differently on your computer then everyone else’s. From then one, each time you check in some code, or a make file you will find that there will be at least one persons PC that it will not build on.

    If you are big enough you will be able to get everyone on your project to edit there csc.rsp in the someway. However this will just mean that code/makefiles you download from the web will not work.

    Very soon it will be like emacs, no one can just walk into a new job and use emacs and the key bindings (and most other things) are different on each site. It was so nice when I started working on NT, and know what to expect when I set down at a unknown pc.

    Ringi at bigfoot dot com
  • Anonymous
    July 09, 2004
    I understand your point, but I respectfully disagree for a couple of reasons. First csc.rsp does not affect any builds done inside the IDE using the built-in project system. Second, I think most software organizations that don't use the IDE's project system, have their own build scripts that they control tightly and thus usually explicitly pass in "/noconfig" to prevent csc.rsp from even being a factor. Thus in my mind csc.rsp is really only for those of us who are hobbyists and or part of small software groups. For those groups I think it is great to customize the file. Of course for it to be truely customizable it shoulld be per-user and stored someplace in My Documents folder...
  • Anonymous
    July 12, 2004
    What's the point in the '/nostdlib' option? I've tried to enable it and compile the file Simplest.cs:
    <code>
    public class Test
    {
    }
    </code>
    What I have got is an (expected but nevertheless weird) error :

    error CS0518: The predefined type 'System.Byte' is not defined or imported

    Note that the code does not reference 'System.Byte', so the error message somehow reflects compiler's internals. It is a bit confusing - how a predefined type might not be defined?

    So the question is - what is the sense in the '/nostdlib' option?

    Thanks,
    Dmitry
  • Anonymous
    July 14, 2004
    There are 2 reasons for using /nostdlib:
    1) When building mscorlib.dll
    2) When you want to reference a different version of mscorlib.dll than the default one (like when building for the Compact Frameworks).
  • Anonymous
    July 16, 2004
    Oops! So stupid of me... You're quite right, of course - especially about the second reason that is in fact quite obvious. I was so confused by the mysterious compiler message that I forgot about CompactFramework and its own mscorlib

    Thanks,
    Dmitry
  • Anonymous
    July 16, 2004
    The reason for the error message goes back to the C# language spec. Unlike native compilers that internally define what the types int, short, long, float, and double are, C# relies on a base class library to define those types. Thus very early in the compilation it has to find those 'predefined' types, either in one of the references or in source. Without them it can't generate proper code at all.

    If you like this sort of stuff, and like to twist your brain, I encourage you to browse the source for mscorlib.dll (you can find it through rotor or possibly mono) for some of these types (like System.Int32). Most of the methods look like they would cause some sort of recursion, but the compiler has special rules to handle compiling these predefined types to break that recursion.
  • Anonymous
    April 10, 2006
    i've got a question about '/nostdlib'.  i've searched a lot for this answer, and nobody seems to touch on it at all.

    the below msdn article makes it seem like you could write your own version of mscorlib and compile it on its own. (it says, regarding /nostdlib, "Use this option if you want to define or create your own System namespace and objects.")

    http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-US/library/fa13yay7(VS.80).aspx

    so i tried compiling an empty project to a library and got the error about the missing type 'System.Byte'. i continued through every type it complained about and added just class skeletons, until i got internal compiler error at stage 'BEGIN'.

    then not knowing what else to do, i decompiled the appropriate types with reflector, and copied them to my own project.  they still would not compile; i got the same internal error message at BEGIN, and no other errors.

    my question is, is it possible in c# alone to compile an assembly with the 'nostdlib' option?
  • Anonymous
    April 17, 2006
    Is there a way to set this option (nostdlib) when compiling a Visual J# 2003 project?. I tried with vjc compiler but it doesn't have this option. I tried with a plug-in for VS 2003, but the project doesn't have references to vjslib.dll I could remove. The only way I found is to replace the references from the IL code but I would like not to do that.
    Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  
  • Anonymous
    April 17, 2006
    Sorry, but J# is a completely different compiler that I know nothing about.
    --Grant