Disclosed herein are representative embodiments of tools and techniques for installing, executing, and/or updating managed applications through generation of native code from code in an intermediate language. According to one exemplary technique, a computing device receives machine dependent intermediate language code (MDIL code) generated by an online provider for an application. Additionally, the computing device installs the application on the computing device by generating a native image for the application, which includes binding a portion of the MDIL code with one or more libraries on the computing device. Also, the native image is stored on the computing device for use in loading the application for execution.