C# instead of IronRuby as an embedded "scripting" language in .NET 3.5

Question

What is the best practice for using C# as an embedded internal scripting application for a .NET 3.5 application? I have an app with a few small IronRuby scripts in it. None of which is really exploiting the dynamic nature of IronRuby.

Apparently its against our corporate standard to be using IronRuby or IronPython right now. Ooopps. What is the best way that I can use C# as my scripting language instead?

The one thing that I liked about IronRuby was I could make small changes while the app was running and then re-run the scripts. Any way to do this in C#? Or will have to constantly restart the app?

Answer 1

You might be able to update your C# code while the app is running, but it's not going to be simple. This thread discusses attempts to do such a thing:

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/30778032/assemblyload-and-updat.aspx

At the bottom of that thread is a link to this article, which looks helpful:

http://dotnet.sys-con.com/node/113340

The basic approach is to load your plugin assembly in a separate AppDomain, and then unload the entire AppDomain when you want to replace your plugin.

Answer 2

Embedding IronRuby for scripting isn't too hard.
Jimmy Schementi (one of the IronRuby devs) has a complete, detailed example of this here:

http://blog.jimmy.schementi.com/2009/12/ironruby-rubyconf-2009-part-35.html

I don't think this will be very easy to do with C#.

Sorry, I know this doesn't answer your question but hopefully it will be of some use for those trying to deal w/ scripting through IronRuby.

Answer 3

At the moment you can't use C# as a scripting language, unless you switch to Mono.

Microsoft have stated that this (or similar functionality) is on the roadmap for C# version 5, which is far into the future.

You can currently fake it however, by creating a temporary "code file" as an in memory string, externally running the C# compiler to produce a new in-memory assembly, and then loading and executing that assembly.
This will work well once, but if you want to update it without restarting you'll have to load the in-memory assembly in a new appdomain, and unload the old one each time (which gets quite tricky).

To be honest, I wouldn't bother. C# doesn't make for a very good scripting language due to it's compiled nature and static typing

Answer 4

You could always try using CS Script.

http://www.csscript.net/

Personally, though, I'd suggest sticking to either IronRuby or Lua for scripting.