Doesn't the small size only apply if you compile to assembly? If you compile to webasm shouldn't things be different? I am assuming a C# to webasm would be very different from the current C# to IL compiler.
I'm not sure what you mean, could you re-phrase maybe? The article is talking about compiling to WebAssembly already.
I don’t know enough about how C# is AOTd to really answer that. I mean, some runtime code would still need to be in there, I assume?
NGEN, .NET Native, CoreRT, Mono, Xamarin, IL2CPP, HPC#.
A minimal runtime is always needed, for some of the language semantics, FFI and memory management.
Just that only dynamic linking was supported on the regular .NET Framework.
Unity(with IL2CPP), Mono and Windows 8 store apps also support static linking.
So the approach is the same as Xamarin for iOS or .NETbon the Windows store.
There is an additional phase that generates the native code, using MSIL as just yet another compiler phase.
As for the runtime, yes there needs to be a minimal set of services.
But even C, C++, Go, ... need to have some kind of runtime if you want to use all language features.
> Now if you compiled C# to webasm you potentially wouldn't need the .NET runtime
Why not? How does C# work without the runtime? As the docs for .NET Native say:
> You can continue to take advantage of the resources provided by the .NET Framework, including its class library, automatic memory management and garbage collection, and exception handling.
So you still have that runtime code in your binary, even if it's not JITted.