CLI-based compilation flows for the C language

Embedded systems contain a wide variety of processors. Economical and technological factors favor systems made of a combination of diverse but programmable processors. Software has a longer lifetime than the hardware for which it is initially designed. Application portability is thus of utmost importance for the embedded systems industry. The Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) is a rich virtualization environment for the execution of applications written in multiple languages. CLI efficiently captures the semantics of unmanaged languages, such as C. We investigate the use of CLI as a deployment format for embedded systems to reconcile apparently contradictory constraints: the need for portability, the need for high performance and the existence of a large base of legacy C code. In this paper, we motivate our CLI-based compilation environment for C, and its different use scenarios. We then focus on the specific challenges of effectively mapping the C language to CLI, and our proposed solutions. We finally analyze the interactions between the CLI environment and native libraries, which is of primary importance for a practical use of the proposed approach.