Nicholas Wigant pointed me to this little find on next month’s MSDN magazine, Phoenix Rising

Phoenix is an extensible framework for the analysis, optimization and modification of code during compilation.  Phoenix will provide a toolkit that will eventually replace the standard compiler back end (c2.exe) as well as the .NET just-in-time (JIT) and pre-JIT (ngen.exe).

The main concept behind the Phoenix framework is to take the compile unit and convert it to an internal intermediate representation (IR) using a unit reader.  The framework will supply readers for native code, IL and abstract syntax trees (AST).  From the new IR representation, the program is then compiled into native code or IL.

Hopefully with the new Phoenix framework, we can start looking at third-gen languages as nothing more than another tool to accomplish a task.  Rather than an extra thing we need to learn to keep up with the field.  Remember, at the end of the day, it’s just IL.

To find out more about Phoenix, check out MS Research.

Quick question: Does anybody know if Phoenix is part of the new language service/engine for Studio Orcas?