[c#] Which .NET Dependency Injection frameworks are worth looking into?

Which C#/.NET Dependency Injection frameworks are worth looking into? And what can you say about their complexity and speed.

I've used Spring.NET in the past and had great success with it. I never noticed any substantial overhead with it, though the project we used it on was fairly heavy on its own. It only took a little time reading through the documentation to get it set up.

I can recommend Ninject. It's incredibly fast and easy to use but only if you don't need XML configuration, else you should use Windsor.

Spring.Net is quite solid, but the documentation took some time to wade through. Autofac is good, and while .Net 2.0 is supported, you need VS 2008 to compile it, or else use the command line to build your app.

Autofac. https://github.com/autofac/Autofac It is really fast and pretty good. Here is a link with comparisons (made after Ninject fixed a memory leak issue).

http://www.codinginstinct.com/2008/05/ioc-container-benchmark-rerevisted.html

The great thing about C# is that it is following a path beaten by years of Java developers before it. So, my advice, generally speaking when looking for tools of this nature, is to look for the solid Java answer and see if there exists a .NET adaptation yet.

So when it comes to DI (and there are so many options out there, this really is a matter of taste) is Spring.NET. Additionally, it's always wise to research the people behind projects. I have no issue suggesting SourceGear products for source control (outside of using them) because I have respect for Eric Sink. I have seen Mark Pollack speak and what can I say, the guy just gets it.

In the end, there are a lot of DI frameworks and your best bet is to do some sample projects with a few of them and make an educated choice.

Good luck!

Ninject is great. It seems really fast, but I haven't done any comparisons. I know Nate, the author, did some comparisons between Ninject and other DI frameworks and is looking for more ways to improve the speed of Ninject.

I've heard lots of people I respect say good things about StructureMap and CastleWindsor. Those, in my mind, are the big three to look at right now.

It depends on what you are looking for, as they each have their pros and cons.

1. Spring.NET is the most mature as it comes out of Spring from the Java world. Spring has a very rich set of framework libraries that extend it to support Web, Windows, etc.
2. Castle Windsor is one of the most widely used in the .NET platform and has the largest ecosystem, is highly configurable / extensible, has custom lifetime management, AOP support, has inherent NHibernate support and is an all around awesome container. Windsor is part of an entire stack which includes Monorail, Active Record, etc. NHibernate itself builds on top of Windsor.
3. Structure Map has very rich and fine grained configuration through an internal DSL.
4. Autofac is an IoC container of the new age with all of it's inherent functional programming support. It also takes a different approach on managing lifetime than the others. Autofac is still very new, but it pushes the bar on what is possible with IoC.
5. Ninject I have heard is more bare bones with a less is more approach (heard not experienced).
6. The biggest discriminator of Unity is: it's from and supported by Microsoft (p&p). Unity has very good performance, and great documentation. It is also highly configurable. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of say Castle / Structure Map.

So in summary, it really depends on what is important to you. I would agree with others on going and evaluating and seeing which one fits. The nice thing is you have a nice selection of donuts rather than just having to have a jelly one.

I think a good place to start is with Ninject, it is new and has taken into account alot of fine tuning and is really fast. Nate, the developer, really has a great site and great support.

I spent the better part of a day struggling without success to get the simplest Spring.NET example working. Could never figure out how to get it to find my assembly from the XML file. In about 2 hours, on the other hand, I was able to get Ninject working, including testing integration with both NUnit and MSTest.

I'm a huge fan of Castle. I love the facilities it also provides beyond the IoC Container story. It really simplfies using NHibernate, logging, AOP, etc. I also use Binsor for configuration with Boo and have really fallen in love with Boo as a language because of it.

I use Simple Injector:

Simple Injector is an easy, flexible and fast dependency injection library that uses best practice to guide your solutions toward the pit of success.