Introduction to Native (Ahead of Time) Compilation in DotNet

Microsoft keeps working in his AOT Native .NET runtime, optimized for ahead of time compilation. A feature that offers great benefits for many critical apps. Native compiled apps startup is faster since they execute already compiled code in a single file!   AOT enables some scenarios like:

• Copying a single file executable from one machine and run on another (of the same kind) without installing a .NET runtime.
• Creating and running a docker image that contains a single file executable (e.g. just one file in addition to Ubuntu).
• Compiling dotnet managed libraries into shared or static libraries that can be consumed from other languages without COM or library wrappers. (Like c++ or Rust)
• Smaller compilation output sizes.

In this session we will learn:

• The main differences, benefits and drawbacks between Just-In-Time compilation and Ahead-Of-Time compilation
• The startup and performance gains that AOT can bring us
• How to compile our dotnet applications (console, webapps) into native code in Linux and Windows
• Interoping with dotnet natively compiled libraries to be consumed by other languages (Demos with Rust)