I noticed over the weekend that the CLR code generation team has started a blog to communicate about issues related to just-in-time (JIT) compilation and native image generation (NGen) for binaries that run on the .NET Framework.

The first technical post on the blog, located at http://blogs.msdn.com/clrcodegeneration/archive/2007/09/15/to-ngen-or-not-to-ngen.aspx, provides a useful overview of the following topics:

• Scenarios where it is helpful to run NGen for an application
• Scenarios where it is not helpful (and can often do more harm than good) to run NGen for an application
• Issues to keep in mind when running NGen for an application
• Links to more detailed technical documentation about how NGen works behind the scenes

I encourage you to take a look at this blog post if you are considering using NGen for your application, and I also encourage you to keep an eye on the CLR code generation team's blog for more technical discussions of JIT and NGen in the future.