IoC Container Comparison Matrix (2011)

This is my first Blog and I hope there will be more to come. Me and me mate, Lucas Pains, was doing some research for a good IoC Container to use in our project and even thought, these information widely available in tons of websites and blogs, however, they are all missing this and that. What a drag….. Finally we actually finish compiling a comparison matrix.

I never much of a blogger myself but me best mate (Lucas Pains) persuaded that it would be good to publish this on a blog so I hope this will aid other developers in regard of this topic.




IoC Container Comparison Matrix (2011)

	Autofac	Windsor	Unity	StructureMap	Spring.Net	Ninject
Current version	2.5.2	2.5.3	2.1	2.6.1	1.3.2	2.2
.Net supported Version for current release	3.5 and 4.0	3.5	3.5 and 4.0	3.5	3.5 and 4.0	4.0, 3.5, Mono 2.0, Compact Framework 3.5
NuGet available?	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Method injection	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes	Yes
Constructor Injection	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Property injection	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Automatic Registration	Yes	Yes, obsolete	No	Yes	Not easy	Yes
Lambda support when creating /resolving objects	Yes	Not found. Documentation is out.	?	Yes	?	Yes
Fluent Interface	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Singleton lifetime support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Transient lifetime support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Custom Lifetime support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Nested Containers	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Probably not.	Yes. Needs extension.
Xml configuration	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes. Needs extension.
Interception	Yes with DynamicProxy2	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes. Needs extension.
Supports Auto Mocking	NMock2	No	Needs extension	Rhino Mocks, Rhino Mocks AAA, and Moq out of the box	No	Yes. Needs extension.
Code generation approach	?	?	?	IL generation	?	?
AOP	Yes with DynamicProxy2	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes. Needs extension.
Test Framework Integration	?	?	?	?	Nunit, MsTest	?
Windows Phone 7 Integration	Yes	No	No	No	No	Yes
MVC integration	Yes	?	Not really. MVC Turbine is an option.	Not really. MVC Turbine is an option.	Yes. MVC 2.0 and 3.0	Yes. Needs extension.
WCF Integration	Yes	Yes	Not really	?	Yes	Yes. Needs extension.
WPF/Silverlight Integration	Prism, MEF	Yes	Yes	?	?	Yes
Visual Studio Extension/Integration	?	?	?	?	Yes	?
Release Activity	High. Last release August 12th, 2011	High. Last release August 15th, 2011	Very low. Last release on May 2011	Low. Last release on February, 2010	Medium. Last release August 1st, 2011	Medium to low.
License	Open source, MIT License	Open Source, Apache License Version 2.0	Open Source, Microsoft public License (Ms-PL)	Open Source, Apache License Version 2.0	Open Source, Apache License Version 2.0	Open Source, Apache License Version 2.0

In conclusion, they all vary in the features one way or another. It really depends on your needs, taste, comfort zone and various reasons. At this point, I believe that Autofac would be best and sufficient for our solution along with a Mocking framework to assist.

Hope this helps......... Enjoy.

PS: Please contribute some comments as this is my first Blog and would also like to learn from all of you.