This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.
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Method Implementation Metadata
For each method for which an implementation is supplied in the current NGWS runtime image, the tool or compiler will emit information used by the IL-to-native code compilers, the NGWS runtime loader, and other runtime services. This information includes:
- Whether the code is managed or unmanaged.
- Whether the implementation is in native code or IL.
- The location of the method body in the current image, as an address relative to the start of the image file in which it is located (a Relative Virtual Address, or RVA). Or, alternatively, the RVA is encoded as 0 and other metadata is used to tell the runtime where the method implementation can be found, including:
- An implementation to be located via the NGWS runtime Interoperability Services. See related specifications for details.
- Forwarding calls through an imported global static method.
The NGWS Runtime Metadata API Specification describes the various method calls for emitting implementation metadata, depending on whether the emitting tool is a RAD-style (rapid application development) tool, such as Visual Basic (VB) or a scripting language, or a high-level language compiler such as Visual C++ (VC).