Re: FW: [DotGNU]The Mingw32 ilrun seems to run

[Rhys Weatherley]

Simon Guindon wrote:

> If they choose pnet, then we overwrite the mscoree.dll, if not, we leave it.
> To even further extend it, make a backup of mscoree.dll and have a toggle
> app that allows you to switch it back and forth from pnet/.NET

It's not just an issue of "Choose pnet or .NET Framework".  Future
versions of Windows will ship with MS'es CLR as standard.  Replacing
"mscoree.dll" globally is likely to break everything, resulting in
Windows itself ceasing to function.  If you think that pulling IE's
tentacles out of Windows is hard, then you ain't seen nothing yet. :-)

I'm starting to regret suggesting this ...

I think people are misunderstanding a little what the role of MS'es
"mscoree.dll" is.  It's not just a clever way to launch the CLR.
It _is_ the CLR.  That dll exports a lot more than just "_CorExeMain".
It also exports COM interfaces to the engine, metadata routines, etc.

There are native unmanaged tools that depend upon this API.  Needless
to say, building some kind of "chaining" system that wraps through to
the real "mscoree.dll" will be next to impossible to implement.

I was suggesting a quick and dirty hack that will work only if the
user sets up their PATH correctly and does not use any MS application
that may depend upon their CLR.  Providing the user a transparent
way to flip engines is not possible with this mechanism.

Yhe Windows desire to "just click on it" is nonsense anyway.  Users
don't click on .exe files.  They click on icons or menu options.
It is pretty easy to associate an icon with "clrwrap blah.exe" and
make it so transparent that the user is none the wiser.  It's only
a problem for people who run Windows apps from the command-line,
which is mercifully a very small set.

Cheers,

Rhys.