Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Michal Strehovsky

David Charles Wrighton

Mircea Trofin

John Lawrence Hamby

Fadi M Hanna

Atsushi Kanamori

Rudi Martin

Patrick Henri Dussud

Morgan Asher Brown

Turgut Isik

Fatma Didem Gokbulut

Robert Yung-Yi Fu

Pradeep K Jha

Josh Carroll

Bruce Chhay

Pradeep Jha

The present invention extends to methods, systems, and computer program products for controlling runtime access to application programming interfaces Embodiments of the invention allow library developers to more precisely and easily control which of their libraries' APIs can be called dynamically. Thus, their servicing and versioning burden can be more appropriately controlled. Further, application developers can control which such APIs to further exclude from dynamic calling scenarios, to minimize the runtime support overhead (e.g., preventing generation of metadata).

Controlling runtime access to application program interfaces

Support for dynamic behavior is specified while reducing reliance on JIT compilation and large runtimes; semantic characteristics are selectively attached to types and type members outside source code. A directives document contains human-readable directives in a parsable format for submission to an innovative compiler. The directives specify whether a type T or type member M is required, optional, or prohibited in a runtime environment. Some reference an application, library, assembly, or namespace group, and others reference group components: type, type instantiation, method, method instantiation, field, property, or event. Some directives force a generic instantiation. Some directives indirectly reference a type through a parameter, type parameter, or generic directive. Some directives reference degrees to manage runtime activation of type instances, runtime introspection over types, reflection, and/or runtime or static serialization. Degrees may enable or disable types, instance constructors, property setters, property getters, fields, or all type members. Directives may be composed.

Hierarchical directives-based management of runtime behaviors

In one embodiment, a server may identify an executable file using a hash identifier. The servermay compute a hash identifier based on a file metadata set associated with an executable file. The servermay identify the executable file using the hash identifier.

Telemetry file hash and conflict detection

Support for dynamic behavior is provided during static compilation while reducing reliance on JIT compilation and large runtimes. A mapping is created between metadata and native code runtime artifacts, such as between type definition metadata and a runtime type description, or between method definition metadata, a runtime type description, and a native code method location, or field definition metadata, a runtime type description, and a field location. A mapping between runtime artifacts may also be created. Some compilation results include trampoline code to support a reflection invocation of an artifact in the reduced runtime support environment, for virtual method calls, call-time bounds checking, calling convention conversion, or compiler-intrinsic methods. Some results support runtime diagnostics by including certain metadata even when full dynamic behavior is not supported.

Supporting dynamic behavior in statically compiled programs

Controlling runtime access to application programming interfaces

Growing community of inventors

Redmond, WA, United States of America

Michal Strehovsky