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.NET Core Glossary

This glossary defines terms, both common and more niche, that are important to understand when reading .NET Core documents and source code. They are also often used by .NET Core team members and other contributors when conversing on GitHub (issues, PRs), on twitter and other sites.

As much as possible, we should link to the most authoritative and recent source of information for a term. That approach should be the most helpful for people who want to learn more about a topic.

Term Description
AOT Ahead-of-time compiler. Converts the MSIL bytecode to native machine code for a specific target CPU architecture.
BBT Microsoft internal early version of C/C++ PGO. See https://www.microsoft.com/windows/cse/bit_projects.mspx.
BOTR Book Of The Runtime.
CLR Common Language Runtime.
COMPlus An early name for the .NET platform, back when it was envisioned as a successor to the COM platform (hence, "COM+"). Used in various places in the CLR infrastructure, most prominently as a common prefix for the names of internal configuration settings. Note that this is different from the product that eventually ended up being named COM+.
COR Common Object Runtime. The name of .NET before it was named .NET.
DAC Data Access Component. An abstraction layer over the internal structures in the runtime.
EE Execution Engine.
GC Garbage Collector.
IPC Inter-Process Communication.
JIT Just-in-Time compiler. RyuJIT is the code name for the next generation Just-in-Time(aka "JIT") for the .NET runtime.
LCG Lightweight Code Generation. An early name for dynamic methods.
MD MetaData.
MDA Managed Debugging Assistant - see details (Note: Not in .NET Core, equivalent diagnostic functionality is made available on a case-by-case basis, e.g. #15465)
NGen Native Image Generator.
NYI Not Yet Implemented.
PAL Platform Adaptation Layer. Provides an abstraction layer between the runtime and the operating system.
PE Portable Executable.
PGO Profile Guided Optimization - see details.
POGO Profile Guided Optimization - see details.
ProjectN Codename for the first version of .NET Native for UWP.
R2R Ready-to-Run. A flavor of native images - command line switch of crossgen.
Redhawk Codename for experimental minimal managed code runtime that evolved into CoreRT.
SOS Son of Strike. The debugging extension for DbgEng based debuggers. Uses the DAC as an abstraction layer for its operation.
SuperPMI JIT component test framework (super fast JIT testing - it mocks/replays EE in EE-JIT interface) - see SuperPMI details.
SVR The CLR used to be built as two variants, with one called "mscorsvr.dll", to mean the "server" version. In particular, it contained the server GC implementation, which was intended for multi-threaded apps capable of taking advantage of multiple processors. In the .NET Framework 2 release, the two variants were merged into "mscorwks.dll". The WKS version was the default, however the SVR version remained available.
TPA Trusted Platform Assemblies used to be a special set of assemblies that comprised the platform assemblies, when it was originally designed. As of today, it is simply the set of assemblies known to constitute the application.
URT Universal Runtime. Ancient name for what ended up being .NET, is used in the WinError facility name FACILITY_URT.
UTC Universal Tuple Compiler. The Microsoft C++ optimizer back-end that that starts by converting the information from the FrontEnd into tuples – a binary stream of instructions.
UWP Universal Windows Platform (UWP) is a platform-homogeneous application architecture available on every device that runs Windows 10.
VSD Virtual Stub Dispatch. Technique of using stubs for virtual method invocations instead of the traditional virtual method table.
VM Virtual machine.
WKS The CLR used to be built as two variants, with one called "mscorwks.dll", to mean the "workstation" version. In particular, it contained the client GC implementation, which was intended for single-threaded apps, independent of how many processors were on the machine. In the .NET Framework 2 release, the two variants were merged into "mscorwks.dll". The WKS version was the default, however the SVR version remained available.
ZAP Original code name for NGen.