Roslyn-Based DSLs vs. Standard C# Scripts
One of the many benefits of the Roslyn compiler-as-a-platform approach is that we can use it within our own applications to enable interesting scenarios like code-based configuration or scriptable behaviors. Roslyn provides several facilities for making this possible including a compilation API, access to syntax and semantic information, and a dedicated scripting API. In addition, Roslyn also powers the execution of C# scripts (typically ending in the .csx extension) by providing a script runner executable that's basically a thin wrapper around the scripting API I just mentioned. This gives developers many different options for how to introduce the power of code-driven functionality to their codebase. This post takes a look at two such options and why you might want to use one over the other. We'll also consider some of the fundamental reasons why there are tradeoffs at all and what could be done to improve the situation.