Use of volatile causes runtime MissingFieldException on rewritten assembly

Question

We recently came across an issue when using the volatile keyword and the rewriter.

When not using the rewriter, everything worked fine, however when setting Perform Runtime Contract Checking to ReleaseRequires, a MissingFieldException was thrown when it came across the line of code accessing the field:

        private void DoTest()
        {
            Test.PerformingTest = true;
        }

The exception is only thrown if the referenced field is in a separate assembly.

namespace Library
{
    public class Test
    {
        public static volatile bool PerformingTest;
    }
}

Removing the volatile keyword fixes the issue, but why would the rewriter cause this exception to be thrown?

Answer 1

I have asked a very similar question on SO.  No answers there, either

http://stackoverflow.com/q/11142908/90475

Answer 2

Sorry about that! Are both assemblies being rewritten? Or just the one referencing the volatile field?

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Mike Barnett

Answer 3

I was able to reproduce the problem. The current rewriter doesn't preserve the required modifier on the type of the volatile field reference. At this point we are moving the rewriter to be based on top of a new infrastructure. I have verified that the new code does not display the same problem. We are close enough to releasing the new rewriter that we are not fixing any bugs in the old one. Unfortunately I do not have a firm date at which I can promise the new version, but it should be very soon.

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Mike Barnett

Answer 4

I fixed this now. It will appear in the next release.

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Cheers, -MaF (Manuel Fahndrich)