[DotGNU]Portable.NET update 9 Nov 2001

[Rhys Weatherley]

In the future, I will be posting weekly updates on the status
of Portable.NET to "address@hidden".  This isn't an
official release notification, but rather an update on what
I've been doing during the previous week.  All of the changes
mentioned here can be obtained from the CVS repository on
"savannah.gnu.org".  Release notifications will contine to
be posted separately.

A number of people have reported alignment problems on
Solaris, particularly 64-bit Solaris.  So this week, I've been
working on alignment issues very heavily.  The incidence
of "bus errors" and "SEGV's" should be vastly reduced
now.  However, I don't have a 64-bit system myself so
I'd appreciate it if someone could test this for me.

The makefiles for "pnetlib" have been a bit of a pain to
maintain lately, so I started work this week on the "csant"
program.  This is a C# build tool, similar to "NAnt", but
written in C instead of C#.  I need a C version because
of the "chicken and egg problem": I can't compile "NAnt"
until I have a C# library, but I need something like "NAnt"
to compile the C# library.  A C version breaks the loop.

The "csant" program takes an XML description of the
program to be built, and then calls the C# compiler with
the necessary options.  A unique feature, compared to
"NAnt", is that "csant" is aware of the differences
between the Portable.NET, Microsoft, and Mono C#
compilers.  This allows the same XML file to be used
to build with any C# compiler.

I'm also working on a proposal, in conjunction with
Miguel de Icaza, for a new resource system for C#.
The string localization support that is present in C#
is a bit of a pain to use.  Both Portable.NET and
Mono need a better version, so Miguel and I are
working together to design a common system.
The first version of the proposal can be found here:

http://www.southern-storm.com.au/l10n.html

Feedback is welcome.

Cheers,

Rhys.