![[HomePage]](/static/images/project-logos/nostalgiawiki.png)
The common language infrastructure is used in the Microsoft .NET initiative as the basis for running programs written in different programming languages. Before this Visual Basic for example has required a component VBRUN and Visual C++ uses MSVCRT for the compiled programs to run. The common language infrastructure is an effort to unify the different runtime modules needed.
It uses a virtual machine and a class library Common Language Runtime. (see Microsoft site [1]). There are many compilers beeing developed which produce code for this virtual machine. The code it executes is called Common Intermediate Language (CIL) or Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL).
- Visual Studio .net
- Languages supported by .net]
- efforts for an open source implementation
- The documents supplied to ECMA for standarisation (nothing ratified yet - November 2001)
It seems that in the future there will be at least two major virtual machine technologies competing (see Java virtual machine)