VietMX Staff asked 3 years ago
The C# source makes its way into a native app in very different ways on each platform:
- iOS – C# is ahead-of-time (AOT) compiled to ARM assembly language. The .NET framework is included, with unused classes being stripped out during linking to reduce the application size. Apple does not allow runtime code generation on iOS, so some language features are not available.
- Android – C# is compiled to IL and packaged with MonoVM + JIT’ing. Unused classes in the framework are stripped out during linking. The application runs side-by-side with Java/ART (Android runtime) and interacts with the native types via JNI.
- Windows – C# is compiled to IL and executed by the built-in runtime, and does not require Xamarin tools. Designing Windows applications following Xamarin’s guidance makes it simpler to re-use the code on iOS and Android. Note that the Universal Windows Platform also has a .NET Native option which behaves similarly to Xamarin.iOS’ AOT compilation.
