I want to guess that "ambient container" has something to do with the fact that it's a static class, but that's just a guess.
Or is this referring to a standard pattern? (i.e. I really need to read that GoF book cover to cover)
namespace Microsoft.Practices.ServiceLocation
{
/// <summary>
/// This class provides the ambient container for this application. If your
/// framework defines such an ambient container, use ServiceLocator.Current
/// to get it.
/// </summary>
public static class ServiceLocator
{
private static ServiceLocatorProvider currentProvider;
/// <summary>
/// The current ambient container.
/// </summary>
public static IServiceLocator Current
{
get { return currentProvider(); }
}
/// <summary>
/// Set the delegate that is used to retrieve the current container.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="newProvider">Delegate that, when called, will return
/// the current ambient container.</param>
public static void SetLocatorProvider(ServiceLocatorProvider newProvider)
{
currentProvider = newProvider;
}
}
}