Editing Common Language Infrastructure (section)

==Overview==
[[File:Overview of the Common Language Infrastructure 2015.svg|thumb|280px|Visual overview of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI)]]
Among other things, the CLI specification describes the following five aspects:

;The [[Common Type System]] (CTS)
:A set of [[data type]]s and operations that are shared by all CTS-compliant [[programming language]]s.
;The [[Metadata (CLI)|Metadata]]
:Information about program structure is [[Language-independent specification|language-agnostic]], so that it can be referenced between languages and tools, making it easy to work with code written in a language the developer is not using.
;The Common Language Specification (CLS)
:The CLS, a subset of the CTS, are rules to which components developed with/for the supported languages must adhere.
:They apply to consumers (developers who are programmatically accessing a component that is CLS-compliant), frameworks (developers who are using a language compiler to create CLS-compliant libraries), and extenders (developers who are creating a tool such as a language compiler or a code parser that creates CLS-compliant components).
;The [[Virtual Execution System]] (VES)
:The VES loads and executes CLI-compatible programs, using the metadata to combine separately generated pieces of code at runtime. 
:All compatible languages compile to [[Common Intermediate Language]] (CIL), which is an [[intermediate language]] that is abstracted from the platform hardware. When the code is executed, the platform-specific VES will compile the CIL to the [[machine language]] according to the specific hardware and operating system.
:In the CLI standard initially developed by Microsoft, the VES is implemented by the [[Common Language Runtime]] (CLR).

;The [[Standard Libraries (CLI)|Standard Libraries]]
:A set of libraries providing many common functions, such as file reading and writing. Their core is the [[Standard Libraries (CLI)#Base Class Library|Base Class Library]] (BCL).