tags:

views:

1764

answers:

3
+11  Q: 

Why exactly isn't MEF a DI/IoC Container?

It's been said on the blogosphere and by MS themselves that MEF isn't another IoC Container.

Ok...but why? It seems the same to me. Maybe it's not as good as Unity or castle Windsor, but it still fits the definition, doesn't it?

Can anyone explain why MEF isn't an IoC Container like Unity or Castle Windsor?

+3  A: 

The answer from the horses mouth

CVertex  2008-10-19 16:46:49
+4  A: 

You should also listen to Glenn Block discussing MEF on Herding Code where he differentiates it from DI/IoC containers:

http://herdingcode.com/?p=28

http://herdingcode.com/?p=31

Kev  2008-10-19 16:53:00
+6  A: 

We covered this in a recent hanselminutes episode.

http://www.hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=166

Glenn Block  2009-02-01 08:11:13
For those who don't want to listen to the full podcast, this what I think the key thing that Glenn says is: "you use MEF to really manage a set of unknown things, you use IoC Containers to manage a set of known things".From my understanding, MEF is good for "plugin" style scenarios where you don't know (or don't care) what the plugin types will be ahead of time. However, it is not good for loading known types based off a configuration (ie "get me an ILogger" and in the configuration you've specified an AwesomeLogger and therefore you get an AwesomeLogger.)
Daniel Chambers  2010-01-05 06:22:44
Daniel, you are absolutely right. When it comes to explicit wiring of types, that is not MEF's strong point. It's doable but you have to jump through many hoops.
Glenn Block  2010-01-06 10:10:20

related questions

Subsonic Vs NHibernate
How to check For File Lock in C# ?
Is nAnt still supported and suitable for .net 3.5/VS2008?
Limit size of Queue<T> in .NET?
Viewstate invalid when using Safari
Free OCR library
Unhandled Exception Handler in .NET 1.1
Localising date format descriptors
Get a new object instance from a Type in C#
VFP .NET OLEdb provider does not work in Win 64-Bits. Help
.NET Testing Framework Advice
Embedded Database for .net that can run off a network
Automatically update version number
Homegrown consumption of web services
How do you migrate a large app from VB6 to VB .net ?
.NET Migrations Engine
Adding Scripting functionality to .NET applications
SQLite and XSD
Floating Point Number parsing: Is there a Catch All algorithm?
How do I programmatically create a PDF in my .NET application?
How do I sync the SVN revision number with my ASP.NET web site?
XSD DataSets and ignoring foreign keys
Anatomy of a "Memory Leak"
Reliable Timer in a Console Application
How do I calculate relative time?