That said, for more complex results, you'd typically load a serialization on start.
I can see the value in this tool, but there must be a fairly limited niche which is too expensive to just have as static and run on start-up and cache, but not so large you'd prefer to just serialize, store and load.
It also needs to be something that is dynamic at compile time but not at runtime.
So it's very niche, but it's an interesting take on the concept, and it looks easier to use than the default source generators.
The use cases are different. While MSBuild tasks run during build (and partially when loading a project), typically the IDE is oblivious what happens there. The source generator runs directly inside the compiler infrastructure and thus you didn't get error highlights for code that would otherwise be only generated during build but not as you type. This makes it much more friendly than pure build-time generation of code.
I love (and heavily use) source generators, but the development experience is godawful. Working with the raw Roslyn types is painful at best and this is compounded by them having to be written against .NET Standard, severely limiting the use of newer .NET functionality.
Eventually I want to write a good baseline library to use for my source generators -- simplifying finding definitions with attributes, mapping types to System.Type, adding some basic pattern matching for structures -- but haven't found a way to do it that's general enough while being very useful.
I used to think so too, but I do have to complain about Microsoft doing the Microsoft thing - they have a brilliant idea (and execution), but they bury it in so much boilerplate that 99% of people who would use it are put off by it.
The amount of stuff you have to wade through here compared to something like comptime in Zig (Roslyn API, setting up the project, having VS recognize it and inject it in the compiler, debugging etc) makes usage of these an absolute pain.
Makes me think of Boo language; Boo was so good at metaprogramming and multi-phasr programming! A very fine .NET language that was so far ahead of the curve, with having the tools of that language be usable at runtime.
Alas many of the docs are offline now. But it had great quasiquotes, which let you write code that gets turned into AST that you can then process. Good macros. A programmable compiler pipeline. So much. Alas, obscured now. https://boo-language.github.io/
I started using C# recently for a hobby project writing a game engine on top of Monogame, and I have been very surprised at how nice of a language C# is to use.
It has a clean syntax, decent package management, and basically every language feature I regularly reach for except algebraic data types, which are probably coming eventually.
I think the association of .NET to Microsoft tarnished my expectations.
• Supported return types:
◦ Collections: ..., List<T>, ...
◦ Note: Arrays are not allowed as return types because they are mutable. Use IReadOnlyList<T> instead.
I don't understand. Why is List<T> allowed then if it's mutable?
Does this finally allow reading string literals from files and include them into the binaries?
I've seen a Go project that was heavily using https://pkg.go.dev/embed for loading some template files, and got a bit jealous. Back in the days of .NET Framework it was common to compile file contents into resource files, but it was always quite cumbersome.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 36.3 ms ] threadhttps://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-c-source-g...
That said, for more complex results, you'd typically load a serialization on start.
I can see the value in this tool, but there must be a fairly limited niche which is too expensive to just have as static and run on start-up and cache, but not so large you'd prefer to just serialize, store and load.
It also needs to be something that is dynamic at compile time but not at runtime.
So it's very niche, but it's an interesting take on the concept, and it looks easier to use than the default source generators.
Eventually I want to write a good baseline library to use for my source generators -- simplifying finding definitions with attributes, mapping types to System.Type, adding some basic pattern matching for structures -- but haven't found a way to do it that's general enough while being very useful.
The amount of stuff you have to wade through here compared to something like comptime in Zig (Roslyn API, setting up the project, having VS recognize it and inject it in the compiler, debugging etc) makes usage of these an absolute pain.
Alas many of the docs are offline now. But it had great quasiquotes, which let you write code that gets turned into AST that you can then process. Good macros. A programmable compiler pipeline. So much. Alas, obscured now. https://boo-language.github.io/
It has a clean syntax, decent package management, and basically every language feature I regularly reach for except algebraic data types, which are probably coming eventually.
I think the association of .NET to Microsoft tarnished my expectations.
This is more like constrexpr than a macro system.
I've seen a Go project that was heavily using https://pkg.go.dev/embed for loading some template files, and got a bit jealous. Back in the days of .NET Framework it was common to compile file contents into resource files, but it was always quite cumbersome.