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Possible Duplicate:
Choosing between MEF and MAF (System.AddIn)

Is the Managed Extensibility Framework a replacement for System.Addin? Or are they complementary?

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Chris Sutton
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    +1 for this question. How come the answerers didn't touch on whether there is overlap (and what that is) between the two technologies? For instance MSFT:Alex Bulankou offers this quote, "Well, I'd say we probably would like to be positioned as a more generic higher level component model for both modular applications AND external add-ins. AS of this CTP however, MEF does not yet offer a story for versioning and isolation and it does not offer a concrete scenario how MEF can integrate with MAF to obtain this isolation support." – Anonymous Type Feb 08 '11 at 21:46
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    @cdiggins: please don't vote to close an older question as a duplicate of a newer question. For one thing, that stops two questions both being closed as duplicates of one another; secondly, this question wasn't a duplicate when it was first asked. Closing a question as a duplicate tells the asker that they should have searched a bit harder for an answer to their question. When Chris Sutton posted this question, the question you linked to didn't exist and so Chris cannot be accused of not trying hard enough to find it. If it bothers you that much, vote to close the other question as a dupe. – Luke Woodward Jan 06 '13 at 22:12
  • @LukeWoodward: What you say makes sense, however there are other ways to rationalize it. I don't necessarily agree that closing a question as a duplicate is in fact saying anything of the kind to Chris Sutton. To be honest I try to ignore past history and make choices that make StackOverflow.com as good as possible today and tomorrow. Anyway, it is a democratic process, and I'm glad you are presenting an argument to keep the question open and close the other one. – cdiggins Jan 06 '13 at 23:10
  • @LukeWoodward: I notice you didn't vote to close the other question, why not? – cdiggins Jan 06 '13 at 23:13
  • @cdiggins: firstly, the message in the closure banner below does specifically mention 'earlier questions'. Secondly, I'm not convinced that the two questions are duplicates. Perhaps if I knew more about the technologies involved I would be more able to say whether they were duplicates. As I didn't feel informed enough to make a decision, I chose not to vote to close either question. – Luke Woodward Jan 08 '13 at 21:53

4 Answers4

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Short answer no it is not. System.Addin allows you to isolate add-ins in to a seprate app-domain / process. It also provides facilities for versioning. These capabilities are critical for many customers particularly large ISVs. MEF on the other hand is designed to be simple programming model for extensibility. The two can work together and complement each other.

Glenn Block
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It is touched in the MSDN Forums here:

Comparison to the AddIn libraries?

And also by Krzysztof Cwalina in his blog on the release of MEF:

Managed Extensibility Framework

Summary: they live side by side.

Seb Nilsson
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.. just two links for further reference:

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Jakub Šturc
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  • The Kent Boogaart blog link is dead. His new blog appears to be here http://kent-boogaart.com/, but I'm not sure to which post this answer is referring. – Spivonious Nov 13 '15 at 20:23
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Just as a side note, some time ago I developed so called IsolatingCatalog, which is MEF catalog for providing part isolation. You can instruct it so that you parts are created in a separate app domain/process. WCF is used for IPC. Check it out here.

pwlodek
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