Microsoft Unveils Preview of Roslyn Compiler-as-a-Service

As promised, Microsoft has released a community technology preview for Roslyn, its new compiler-as-a-service for C# and Visual Basic. Usually, developers can't see what happens inside a compiler. However, "The Roslyn compilers become services exposed for general consumption, with all of that internal compiler-discovered knowledge made available for developers and their tools to harness," blogged Microsoft's S. Somasegar. "The stages of the compiler for parsing, for doing semantic analysis, for binding, and for IL emitting are all exposed to developers via rich managed APIs."

Microsoft hasn't said when a final build of Roslyn will become available, but Somasegar confirmed that it will not be part of Visual Studio 11.