Microsoft Releases the Source Code for the .NET Framework Libraries
Now that’s a headline you didn’t expect to see. Scott Guthrie posted on his blog that we are providing developers with the ability to download and browse the source code for the .NET Framework Libraries. This will come with Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5. The source code will be released under the Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL).
For those familiar with the debug server, you will be happy to note that Visual Studio 2008 has the capability to automatically retrieve the appropriate .NET Framework source files on demand from Microsoft.
What does this change for ISVs? Did you ever wonder how we implemented data binding? How do the internals really work? One thing I admire about the OSS movement is how easy it is to take a look at how the plumbing actually works. There is always an opportunity to learn when you see how other people do things.
Viewing the source will likely speed up the time it takes you to implement new functionality. This is about the highest fidelity documentation there is. What do _you_ think? Would you do this with your code?
By the way, I'm Rob Craft, Senior Director for the Global ISV Technical Team. My team includes Technical Evangelists and Solutions Architects focused on the biggest of our ISV partners. I look forward to talking about technology topics and related news this year through the team blog.
Regards,
Rob Craft
Comments
Anonymous
October 04, 2007
PingBack from http://www.artofbam.com/wordpress/?p=5266Anonymous
December 02, 2007
Hi. I'm CIO at a company that is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner/ISV, and I was wondering if you knew what we actually have to do to obtain a copy of the source code with VS2008? When deriving server controls from the standard ASP.NET controls, it would help to be able to see what the base server controls are actually doing... Chuck Cooper CIO Paylocity Corporation chuckc@paylocity.comAnonymous
December 10, 2007
Scott’s blog is really the authoritative source for this information. What we know is that it will be available through Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL), once VS2008 is available. How long the lag will be is unknown. The most detail we have is here (from Scott’s blog linked above: To learn more about our source release plans and how the above debugger integration works, please check out this Podcast that Scott Hanselman and Shawn Burke recently recorded. Shawn (who drove the source project on my team) is also going to be publishing a cool Channel9 video later this week that shows using the VS 2008 integrated debugging support with it. Best, Rob Craft