Runtime C# Code Compilation Revisited for Roslyn - Rick Strahl's Web Log

A long time ago (~2008 or so) I built a dynamic runtime compilation library in WestWind.Scripting, which allows for runtime C# compilation of code expressions, code blocks and as of late templates script expansion in a small and lightweight library. I built this tool primarily for my own use in order to support user authored application automation and - more commonly - for a drop-in template C# based scripting engine for text editor expansions in various applications.

At some point in 2014 I ended up releasing it on GitHub along with a NuGet package which have been updated a bit over the years. One limitation and a frequent request that came up in issues was that up until recently this library used the old CodeDom C# compiler APIs limited to .NET Framework - CodeDom doesn't work in .NET Core. Last month I finally got around to updating the code use the latest Roslyn APIs.

In this post I'll talk about the process of using the Roslyn C# Code compilation APIS and the why's and how's of creating a WestWind.Scripting wrapper and more importantly how I actually use it in one of my popular applications.

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