Question

Is there a possibility that I can put some of my code in non-compiled form with my application and then make changes to it on the fly and the application can then just use the new version onwards?

If it is possible (which i secretly know it is using CodeDOM), are there any issue to watch out for using this approach for pluggability (aside from the code protection issue)?

Is there a example available which i can re-use?

Answer 1

You’ve already said you know how to do with with CodeDOM – why not just use that?

If you’re happy with it being C# code, then CSharpCodeProvider does an admirable job. If you’re feeling more adventurous, you might want to consider Boo – read Ayende Rahien’s book on building DSLs in Boo for more information and advice.

For an example of using CSharpCodeProvider, you could download Snippy from my C# in Depth web site. Basically Snippy lets you type in a code snippet and run it, without bothering to declare a class etc. It doesn’t do much more than build and run code, so it’s a fairly handy example 🙂

For plenty more examples, search for CSharpCodeProvider on Stack Overflow. Here’s a short but complete one – code for ‘hello world’ is compiled and then executed.

using System; using System.CodeDom.Compiler; using Microsoft.CSharp;  class Test {     public static void Main(string[] args)     {         string code = @' using System;  class CodeToBeCompiled {     static void Main()     {         Console.WriteLine(''Hello world'');     } }';          var codeProvider = new CSharpCodeProvider();         var parameters = new CompilerParameters         {             GenerateExecutable = true,             OutputAssembly = 'Generated.exe'         };         var results = codeProvider.CompileAssemblyFromSource             (parameters, new[] { code });         results.CompiledAssembly.EntryPoint.Invoke(null, null);     } }