.NET Runtime VS CoreCLR

Compare .NET Runtime vs CoreCLR and see what are their differences.

.NET Runtime

.NET is a cross-platform runtime for cloud, mobile, desktop, and IoT apps. (by dotnet)

CoreCLR

CoreCLR is the runtime for .NET Core. It includes the garbage collector, JIT compiler, primitive data types and low-level classes. (by dotnet)
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.NET Runtime CoreCLR
611 22
14,177 12,786
1.9% -
10.0 0.0
2 days ago over 1 year ago
C#
MIT License -
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

.NET Runtime

Posts with mentions or reviews of .NET Runtime. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-05-08.
  • The search for easier safe systems programming
    11 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 8 May 2024
    .NET has explicit tailcalls - they are heavily used by and were made for F#.

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.reflecti...

    https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/main/docs/design/feat...

  • Arena-Based Parsers
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 8 May 2024
    The description indicates it is not production ready, and is archived at the same time.

    If you pull all stops in each respective language, C# will always end up winning at parsing text as it offers C structs, pointers, zero-cost interop, Rust-style struct generics, cross-platform SIMD API and simply has better compiler. You can win back some performance in Go by writing hot parts in Go's ASM dialect at much greater effort for a specific platform.

    For example, Go has to resort to this https://github.com/golang/go/blob/4ed358b57efdad9ed710be7f4f... in order to efficiently scan memory, while in C# you write the following once and it compiles to all supported ISAs with their respective SIMD instructions for a given vector width: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/56e67a7aacb8a644cc6b8... (there is a lot of code because C# covers much wider range of scenarios and does not accept sacrificing performance in odd lengths and edge cases, which Go does).

    Another example is computing CRC32: you have to write ASM for Go https://github.com/golang/go/blob/4ed358b57efdad9ed710be7f4f..., in C# you simply write standard vectorized routine once https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/56e67a7aacb8a644cc6b8... (its codegen is competitive with hand-intrinsified C++ code).

    There is a lot more of this. Performance and low-level primitives to achieve it have been an area of focus of .NET for a long time, so it is disheartening to see one tenth of effort in Go to receive so much spotlight.

  • Airline keeps mistaking 101-year-old woman for baby
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 28 Apr 2024
    It's an interesting "time is a circle" problem given that a century only has 100 years and then we loop around again. 2-digit years is convenient for people in many situations but they are very lossy, and horrible for machines.

    It reminds me of this breaking change to .Net from last year.[1][2] Maybe AA just needs to update .Net which would pad them out until the 2050's when someone born in the 1950s would be having...exactly the same problem in the article. (It is configurable now so you could just keep pushing it each decade, until it wraps again).

    Or they could use 4-digit years.

    [1] https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/75148

  • The software industry rapidly convergng on 3 languages: Go, Rust, and JavaScript
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 24 Apr 2024
    These can also be passed as arguments to `dotnet publish` if necessary.

    Reference:

    - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/deploying/nati...

    - https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/main/src/coreclr/nati...

    - https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/5b4e770daa190ce69f402... (full list of recognized keys for IlcInstructionSet)

  • The Performance Impact of C++'s `final` Keyword
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 22 Apr 2024
    Yes, that is true. I'm not sure about JVM implementation details but the reason the comment says "virtual and interface" calls is to outline the difference. Virtual calls in .NET are sufficiently close[0] to virtual calls in C++. Interface calls, however, are coded differently[1].

    Also you are correct - virtual calls are not terribly expensive, but they encroach on ever limited* CPU resources like indirect jump and load predictors and, as noted in parent comments, block inlining, which is highly undesirable for small and frequently called methods, particularly when they are in a loop.

    * through great effort of our industry to take back whatever performance wins each generation brings with even more abstractions that fail to improve our productivity

    [0] https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/4895a06c/src/vm/amd64...

    [1] https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/main/docs/design/core... (mind you, the text was initially written 18 ago, wow)

  • Java 23: The New Features Are Officially Announced
    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 17 Apr 2024
    If you care about portable SIMD and performance, you may want to save yourself trouble and skip to C# instead, it also has an extensive guide to using it: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/69110bfdcf5590db1d32c...

    CoreLib and many new libraries are using it heavily to match performance of manually intensified C++ code.

  • Locally test and validate your Renovate configuration files
    4 projects | dev.to | 9 Apr 2024
    DEBUG: packageFiles with updates (repository=local) "config": { "nuget": [ { "deps": [ { "datasource": "nuget", "depType": "nuget", "depName": "Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting", "currentValue": "7.0.0", "updates": [ { "bucket": "non-major", "newVersion": "7.0.1", "newValue": "7.0.1", "releaseTimestamp": "2023-02-14T13:21:52.713Z", "newMajor": 7, "newMinor": 0, "updateType": "patch", "branchName": "renovate/dotnet-monorepo" }, { "bucket": "major", "newVersion": "8.0.0", "newValue": "8.0.0", "releaseTimestamp": "2023-11-14T13:23:17.653Z", "newMajor": 8, "newMinor": 0, "updateType": "major", "branchName": "renovate/major-dotnet-monorepo" } ], "packageName": "Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting", "versioning": "nuget", "warnings": [], "sourceUrl": "https://github.com/dotnet/runtime", "registryUrl": "https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json", "homepage": "https://dot.net/", "currentVersion": "7.0.0", "isSingleVersion": true, "fixedVersion": "7.0.0" } ], "packageFile": "RenovateDemo.csproj" } ] }
  • Chrome Feature: ZSTD Content-Encoding
    10 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 1 Apr 2024
    https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/59591

    Support zstd Content-Encoding:

  • Writing x86 SIMD using x86inc.asm (2017)
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 26 Mar 2024
  • Why choose async/await over threads?
    11 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 25 Mar 2024
    We might not be that far away already. There is this issue[1] on Github, where Microsoft and the community discuss some significant changes.

    There is still a lot of questions unanswered, but initial tests look promising.

    Ref: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/94620

CoreCLR

Posts with mentions or reviews of CoreCLR. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-04-22.
  • The Performance Impact of C++'s `final` Keyword
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 22 Apr 2024
    Yes, that is true. I'm not sure about JVM implementation details but the reason the comment says "virtual and interface" calls is to outline the difference. Virtual calls in .NET are sufficiently close[0] to virtual calls in C++. Interface calls, however, are coded differently[1].

    Also you are correct - virtual calls are not terribly expensive, but they encroach on ever limited* CPU resources like indirect jump and load predictors and, as noted in parent comments, block inlining, which is highly undesirable for small and frequently called methods, particularly when they are in a loop.

    * through great effort of our industry to take back whatever performance wins each generation brings with even more abstractions that fail to improve our productivity

    [0] https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/4895a06c/src/vm/amd64...

    [1] https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/main/docs/design/core... (mind you, the text was initially written 18 ago, wow)

  • How are stack machines optimized?
    1 project | /r/Compilers | 20 Jun 2023
  • Best .net/c# resources for senior engineer
    3 projects | /r/dotnet | 8 Mar 2023
    Sort of, some topic are not relevant anymore, consider this - https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/tree/master/Documentation/botr
  • Is there a C# under the hood tutorial?
    1 project | /r/csharp | 29 Jan 2023
    Fairly advanced stuff but the Book Of The Runtime (BOTR) it's a invaluable resource
  • In depth learning of C#?
    1 project | /r/csharp | 3 Sep 2022
    After that you can check out the The Book of the Runtime, which is the CoreCLR version of the previous book.
  • .NET 6 is now in Ubuntu 22.04
    23 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Aug 2022
    Technically the restrictions already exist, just as a part of the development experience.

    - .NET Hot Reload is only implemented on Windows. It requires support in the .NET runtime, which is technically possible to implement, but the team has not gotten around to implementing it for years. This doesn't have to do with the issue around MS removing the "dotnet watch" command, it's for the "Edit and Continue" feature in IDEs.[1][2]

    - MS was considering deprecating Omnisharp, the open-source language server that implements C# support for VS Code, and replacing it with a closed-source version. Since the announcement, commits to omnisharp-vscode have dropped off significantly. The lack of Omnisharp would mean there would be no real open-source C# development environment for Linux anymore, since MonoDevelop was abandoned a few years ago. [3]

    [1] https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/RIDER-31366/EditContinu...

    [2] https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/issues/23685

    [3] https://github.com/omnisharp/omnisharp-vscode/issues/5276

  • what a .NET specialist should know
    3 projects | /r/dotnet | 14 Aug 2022
    The next step is to realize everything you think you know about .NET is just an abstraction. Next step is to learn about what is going on behind all that syntax sugar and facades. 1st step might be https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/tree/master/Documentation/botr then go down the rabbit hole and have fun
  • Trouble with random numbers
    1 project | /r/csharp | 23 May 2022
  • Is CLR via C# still good?
    2 projects | /r/dotnet | 14 Feb 2022
    Book of the Runtime
  • Understanding dotnet
    1 project | /r/csharp | 18 Jan 2022
    As for the books, back in the days I really enjoyed reading “CLR via C#" by Jeffrey Richter which helped a lot to understand what is under the hood. Other from that, try The Book of the Runtime

What are some alternatives?

When comparing .NET Runtime and CoreCLR you can also consider the following projects:

Ryujinx - Experimental Nintendo Switch Emulator written in C#

sdk - Core functionality needed to create .NET Core projects, that is shared between Visual Studio and CLI

ASP.NET Core - ASP.NET Core is a cross-platform .NET framework for building modern cloud-based web applications on Windows, Mac, or Linux.

Introducing .NET Multi-platform App UI (MAUI) - .NET MAUI is the .NET Multi-platform App UI, a framework for building native device applications spanning mobile, tablet, and desktop.

actix-web - Actix Web is a powerful, pragmatic, and extremely fast web framework for Rust.

referencesource - Source from the Microsoft .NET Reference Source that represent a subset of the .NET Framework

WASI - WebAssembly System Interface

AspNetCore-Developer-Roadmap - Roadmap to becoming an ASP.NET Core developer in 2024

vgpu_unlock - Unlock vGPU functionality for consumer grade GPUs.

Windows UI Library - Windows UI Library: the latest Windows 10 native controls and Fluent styles for your applications

runtimelab - This repo is for experimentation and exploring new ideas that may or may not make it into the main dotnet/runtime repo.

WPF - WPF is a .NET Core UI framework for building Windows desktop applications.