clr_lite VS dali

I wonder if it could run on this Rust implementation of the CLR I wrote a few years ago: https://github.com/Leowbattle/clr_lite

Last year I finished the school year early because of the coronavirus lockdown and had too much free time - so I wrote an interpreter for CLR bytecode (https://github.com/Leowbattle/clr_lite). The ECMA-335 standard contained everything I needed to know for that project: documentation of the EXE format, VM instructions, etc.

I learned a lot doing this project, and I would never have been able to do it without free access to the standard. So I think Tim is right to recognise the value open standards provide to hobbyist programmers.

Tangentially related, I've written a barebones assembler for Android .apk files once (strictly speaking, the assembler is for .dex files, but it also comes with a set of tools to package and sign .apk files). It's written mainly in Nim and provides enough primitives to allow creating Java "stubs" for native .so libraries, so that .apk-s can be built in Nim WITHOUT JDK AT ALL. The Android NDK is still kinda needed/useful, though IIRC mainly for access to adb, and especially adb logcat (which you'll need A LOT for debugging if you try to use this contraption).

I'd love to One Day™ Rewrite It In Rust.

The .dex assembler itself is at: https://github.com/akavel/dali — you may like to check out the tests at: https://github.com/akavel/dali/tree/master/tests to see how using it looks like.

An example project with a simple .apk written purely in Nim (NO JDK) is at: https://github.com/akavel/hellomello/tree/flappy (unfortunately, given Nim's poor packaging story, it's most probably already bitrotten to the extent that it can't be quickly and easily built & used out of the box). I recorded a presentation about this for an online Nim conference — see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr9X5NCwPlI&list=PLxLdEZg8DR...

https://github.com/akavel/dali was one (a fully hand-written assembler for Android .apk files); I managed to write a rudimentary flappy-bird-like prototype in it and did a presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr9X5NCwPlI&list=PLxLdEZg8DR... but on shelf now, didn't get much attention, and I don't feel bad about it. Had some roadblocks, but managed to overcome them, and I'm honestly surprised how the core effort was basically easy to implement and how the formats were open and relatively simple. (The main real issues I had were that debugging via adb logs was tiresome when something was not working.) What was funny about this project was that I started it with basically a thought of: "there will be probably some annoying roadblock at some point that will make it unviable to continue; I accept that and will be ok with stopping once I stumble upon it; but I don't see one clearly from the start [I did some quick initial research how the formats & the bytecode look and they seemed rather simple], and I'm really curious how far I can get if I decide to not think about this possible roadblock". Turns out I was able to get all the way to the end :D