Mapping Ice to C# with IceRPC

IceRPC provides full support for Ice's original Slice language, with definitions stored in .ice files.

Throughout this chapter, we use the term "Ice" to describe constructs in Ice's Slice language, in order to avoid confusion with the new Slice language. For example, an "Ice struct" is short for a struct defined using Ice's Slice language.

Ice's Slice language is described in the Ice Manual.

Targeting IceRPC

The Ice compiler for C# (slice2cs) allows you to generate code for IceRPC. If you build your project with MSBuild, add your .ice files with the SliceCompile item type and set its IceRpc attribute to true, then reference the ZeroC.Ice.Slice.Tools and IceRpc.Ice packages:

<ItemGroup>
  <SliceCompile Include="../slice/Greeter.ice" IceRpc="true" />
  <PackageReference Include="ZeroC.Ice.Slice.Tools" PrivateAssets="All" />
  <PackageReference Include="IceRpc.Ice" />
</ItemGroup>

Instead of setting IceRpc="true" on each SliceCompile item, you can make IceRPC the default RPC framework for all .ice files in your project:

<!-- Set the default RPC framework for .ice file compilation to IceRPC -->
<ItemDefinitionGroup>
  <SliceCompile>
    <IceRpc>true</IceRpc>
  </SliceCompile>
</ItemDefinitionGroup>

In IceRPC mode, slice2cs generates C# files with the extension .IceRpc.cs.

C# language mapping

This chapter describes how Ice definitions map to C# when targeting IceRPC. As you would expect, an Ice struct maps to C# record struct, an Ice class maps to a C# class, an Ice enum maps to a C# enum, an Ice field maps to a C# property, and so on.

There are a few notable differences between the original C# mapping (when targeting Ice) and the new mapping for IceRPC: