You can think of .NET Native as an evolution of the NGen technology that the desktop CLR uses. There’s a few major ways that .NET Native and NGEN differ – Runtime dependency – NGEN uses the full desktop CLR, .NET Native uses a refactored runtime (mrt100_app.dll) which is application local. The .NET Native runtime has … Read more
The difference is when they occur. The JIT compilation occurs while your program is running. NGen is a typically done at installation time of your program and happens before your program is run. One of the goals of NGen is to remove the JIT penalty from application start up.
I don’t use it day-to-day, but it is used by tools that want to boost performance; for example, Paint.NET uses NGEN during the installer (or maybe first use). It is possible (although I don’t know for sure) that some of the MS tools do, too. Basically, NGEN performs much of the JIT for an assembly … Read more
It tells NGen that it is OK to inline the method it’s applied to even in a different assembly. For example: String.Equals has [TargetedPatchingOptOut] You write a program that calls String.Equals You run NGen on this program for maximum performance NGen will inline the String.Equals call, replacing the method call instruction with the actual code … Read more