alt Hacker NewsDo they still need IL2CPP if they have AOT? The goal was always to be able to have cross-platform native binaries right?
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Rohansi • today at 5:11 PM
Unfortunately they do still need IL2CPP because Unity took a different direction than .NET: most reflection still works with IL2CPP but does not with .NET AOT. Switching would be a huge breaking change for everyone, including Unity.
Platform support is also still better with IL2CPP but .NET is catching up.
In theory yes, IL2CPP doesn't need to exist with modern .NET AOT support. In practice, per quotes in the article Unity may have a bit of a sunk cost issue and has no plans to support .NET AOT, only IL2CPP.
Some of that sunk cost may be the above mentioned pointer issue and not enough current plans for a smarter FFI interface between C++ and C#.