Question

What Causes Finalize Methods to Be Called ?

2 answers( of 4 ) to this question are :

• The CLR is unloading an AppDomain When an AppDomain unloads, the CLR considers
  nothing in the AppDomain to be a root, and a garbage collection consisting of
  all generations is performed.

• The CLR is shutting down The CLR shuts down when a process terminates normally
  (as opposed to an external shutdown via Task Manager, for example).

I assume that The CLR is unloading an AppDomain is when the program (console [exe] for example) is being closed ( by pressing close / normal end of program)

What about The CLR is shutting down ? continuing the [Exe] program analogy above :

• what does it mean ? How can I ShutDown CLR …?
• [in the IIS world] does it mean IIS reset ?

please, can I have small explanation ?

Answer 1

The AppDomain is a more granular unit than the Process. A Process can can have multiple AppDomain instances, each of which can be unloaded separately.

The CLR shutdown is the process terminating.

The AppDomain unloading is each AppDomain separately.

(although I would not personally guarantee, without checking the documentation, that all finalizers etc are executed in either case)

As an example, I use multiple AppDomain instances in a long-running self-updating windows service; when new versions are detected it pulls down the new binaries, spawns a new AppDomain, gets it running, switches future operations to the new AppDomain, and unloads the old AppDomain (when running operations have completed).