CHAPTER 1 THE PHILOSOPHY OF .NET
Viewing Assembly Metadata (a.k.a. the Manifest)
Finally, if you are interested in viewing the contents of the assembly’s manifest, simply double-click the
MANIFEST icon (see Figure 1-10).
Figure 1-10. Viewing manifest data via ildasm.exe
To be sure, ildasm.exe has more options than shown here, and I will illustrate additional features of
the tool where appropriate in the text.
The Platform-Independent Nature of .NET
Allow me to briefly comment on the platform-independent nature of the .NET platform. To the surprise
of most developers, .NET assemblies can be developed and executed on non-Microsoft operating
systems, including Mac OS X, various Linux distributions, Solaris, as well as iOS and Android mobile
devices (via the MonoTouch API). To understand how this is possible, you need to come to terms with
yet another abbreviation in the .NET universe: CLI (Common Language Infrastructure).
When Microsoft released the C# programming language and the .NET platform, they also crafted a
set of formal documents that described the syntax and semantics of the C# and CIL languages, the .NET
assembly format, core .NET namespaces, and the mechanics of a hypothetical .NET runtime engine
(known as ѡ