How do .NET AppDomains keep the hosted process alive?

Question

Say I have two AppDomains within a .NET/CLR process.

One of the AppDomains crashes due to a unhandled exception.

Would the other AppDomain still be running fine? What if the default AppDomain crashed otherwise?

I am just wondering on what keeps a process alive. Since AppDomains are completely seperate entities I assume the default AppDomain could crash and other AppDomains could continue?

Not even my C# book explicitly mentions what happens...

That's actually one of the primary purposes of AppDomains – Andrew Barber Jul 15 '14 at 13:11 — Andrew Barber, Jul 15 '14 at 13:11

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 15 '14 at 13:16

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I'd assume that if any of the domains you have created from your main thread crash, you will be fine. However, if your "entry domain" crashes, the others die as well.

answered Jul 15 '14 at 13:16

Darek

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Quick and to the point, thanks! Considering the default app domain creates other app domains at runtime this makes sense. – Xanather Jul 15 '14 at 13:45

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 15 '14 at 13:18

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As you mentioned, AppDomains are completed separete. Each domain has its own resources so when it crash, others are untached. See this. If your default domain crashes all domains created from it will also failed I supposed.

answered Jul 15 '14 at 13:18

Jan Barta

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How do .NET AppDomains keep the hosted process alive?

2 Answers2