Feature request: Implement the latest .NET runtime

[Kevenvz]

Couldn't really find a feature request issue template

Hey,

Recently FiveM really started my interest, found out that most of the resources are written in Lua whilest there is support for C# and JavaScript. I couldn't really understand why tho, I thought most people would create their resources using Javascript (since the node ecosystem is huge).

My question aside, I started investigating the .NET implementation of FiveM and saw that it was using Mono. Don't really know exactly how old FiveM is but that just seems logical since .NET framework is not cross platform and .NET Core was still in development. Recently Microsoft really polished .NET Core and just ditched the name Core and named it .NET 5/6 (5 is the 'it works' version, 6 is the really polished version).

So here is my feature request, it would be amazing to have proper support for the latest .NET runtime. This would create many more opportunities and (hopefully) a lot more .NET developers will enjoy creating resources in FiveM.

I've heard that Unity is currently also moving from Mono to the latest .NET Core runtime, so it would be logical if this will happen to FiveM as well.

I'd like to hear your thoughts!

[blattersturm]

Since you're new, I guess you may not understand the constraints we're having to work with. I'll take out one relevant part from your message and reply to that, since it applies to most of the remainder of the original post as well.

I've heard that Unity is currently also moving from Mono to the latest .NET Core runtime, so it would be logical if this will happen to FiveM as well.

Why is this 'logical'?

1. Unity isn't a platform running untrusted user code on client systems. We are. 'CoreCLR' removed all functionality allowing for this sandboxing, and newer Mono versions would require a lot of work to get this working for zero user advantage other than 'it's newer' as it'd still expose the same API set if we'd just forward-port the current logic for sandboxing.
2. Mono is part of 'the latest .NET Core runtime': https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/tree/main/src/mono - CoreCLR and Mono are the two runtimes available to such, because even Microsoft acknowledges that the CoreCLR codebase (evolved from the old .NET runtime as of ~1999) isn't suited for all the environments Mono is. In fact, .NET 6's 'sandboxed' WASM runtime uses Mono. It's also a bit too slow for our use cases and doesn't support JIT yet so we can't trivially adopt that either.

Most of your request seems to be based on 'it's new so it's good' and somehow assuming 'Mono' is not 'the latest .NET runtime', without stating practical reasons why you'd want this other than vague things like 'it being amazing' and 'creating many more opportunities'.

Finally, since this is not an actionable request, I'll be closing this. I'll leave this unlocked for discussion, but ideally discussions would go on the forums: https://forum.cfx.re/

[Kevenvz]

Wasn't really my intention to create an issue that came across "'it's so simple, everyone's doing it!'". Just wanted to start the conversation of a possibility of implementing CoreCLR.

Thanks for the edits on the comment, I completely forgot that you guys need to run in a sandboxed environment. The real reason I started creating this issue is for the support for .NET Standard 2.1 (Mono 6.4+) haven't really searched if the support is there already.

[blattersturm]

Nope, and netstandard2.1 is a bit of a way-behind target as well given net5.0 etc. supersede it. We're stuck on I believe 5.16 or 5.18 at this time as newer versions led to some memory corruption bug that was hard to diagnose. It may be fixed since, but nobody has had time to try yet.

[Kevenvz]

Understood, thanks for the explanation.

[blattersturm]

Also, if you just want to achieve goal X (in this case, 'using netstandard2.1 libraries on server'), don't post a request asking about everything ever except goal X. It's really annoying.

[michaelcerne]

Could anyone provide additional information on the memory corruption issue listed above?

I'm having trouble finding any references.

[Twinki14]

2. Mono is part of 'the latest .NET Core runtime': https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/tree/main/src/mono - CoreCLR and Mono are the two runtimes available to such, because even Microsoft acknowledges that the CoreCLR codebase (evolved from the old .NET runtime as of ~1999) isn't suited for all the environments Mono is. In fact, .NET 6's 'sandboxed' WASM runtime uses Mono. It's also a bit too slow for our use cases and doesn't support JIT yet so we can't trivially adopt that either.

It's been nearly two years since this reply, but we've had .NET 7 and .NET 8 released since. Would this library, written by someone on the dotnet team, be of any use for FiveM https://github.com/SteveSandersonMS/DotNetIsolator. Might allow you to do your sandboxing without needing to use mono.

Furthermore I started a discussion on this here: #2318