Re: [RFD] Support Mono/.NET

[Raja R Harinath]

Hi,

Ralf Wildenhues <Ralf.Wildenhues <at> gmx.de> writes:

> * Raja R Harinath wrote on Thu, Jun 28, 2007 at 03:13:15PM CEST:
> > 
> > I'm attaching a series of patches adding support for Mono/.NET/ECMA-335
> > (also called the CLI, common language infrastructure).
> > 
> > I'm working on documenting the support, but the testcases show example
> > usage.
> 
> Thank you very much for your patches, esp. all the nice test examples.

Thanks (and sorry about the multiple e-mails.  I had a lot of trouble getting
e-mail out from my laptop, and ended up sending multiple copies).

I have completed more of the work, and you can find some more information at:

  http://idea.opensuse.org/content/ideas/better-automake-support-for-mono

I've a more complete patchset available at:

  http://blog.hurrynot.org/mono-in-automake/patches

and a sample tarball at:

  http://blog.hurrynot.org/mono-in-automake/test-1.0.tar.gz

(I don't want to e-mail the new patches since I had so much trouble last time).

> I'm a complete newbie when it comes to CLI, so is there a website or
> manuals for me to get a jump start on things (notation, compilers and
> options, file types)?

Hmm...  Not in one place, unfortunately :-)  There is some information on
Microsoft's .NET site -- the following may be a starting point

  http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/78f4aasd(VS.80).aspx

There is probably also some information on mono-project.com

  http://mono-project.com/Monkeyguide
  http://mono-project.com/Introduction_to_developing_with_Mono

> Is the intention to support both the Mono as well as the w32 suite 

Yes.

> (are there more)?

Yes.  There's the DotGNU/Portable.NET project.  I'm not familiar with this
project, but expect that the specifics of invocation of compilers, the
extensions of output files, etc., are the same.

> On which systems (all unixoids plus w32)?

However, the current patch only works with Mono (either on unixoid, or on w32). 

Microsoft's compilers don't like seeing '/' in filenames, and I thought it would
be too much of a diversion trying ot detect and convert '/'es to '\'es.  That's
a patch for another day :-)

> Those extensions really are .exe and .dll everywhere, not only on w32?

Yes.  CLI binaries are akin to Java .jar files, and contain a lot of similar
metadata.  The "code" is not native code, but a bytecode called the CIL (common
intermediate language).  However, they are named with .exe and .dll since they
contain enough of the MZ/PE headers to invoke the .NET Jit on w32.

On Unixoid machines, they are explicitly invoked with the Mono jit: 

  mono foo.exe

- Hari