Joining its previous release of .NET Core, Microsoft has released .NET’s CoreCLR as open source project on GitHub. This means that there is a complete open source stack available that can run a .NET application on Windows, with support for Linux and Mac OS X forthcoming. This release marks a big step forward as the entire stack is now open source. Currently developers can build their own copy of CoreCLR and run .NET console apps on it.
CoreCLR is the runtime that handles execution of .NET applications and includes RyuJIT, garbage collector for .NET, and several other .NET components. At present the project supports building its present components for X64 architectures, with more targets planned for the future.
This release marks another successful milestone in Microsoft’s drive to make .NET available to all developers, regardless of their preferred operating system. Beyond supporting non-Windows systems, the project ultimately intends to allow developers to build their own CoreCLR and CoreFX binaries to run their apps. This is still a work in progress (for example ASP.NET 5 web apps currently rely on Mono for non-Windows platforms.)
Those looking for more information can check out the Developer Guide or the announcement video on Channel 9.