[DotGNU]Portable 0.4.0 released

[Rhys Weatherley]

Just in time for the DotGNU Meet-a-thon, I've released the latest
Portable.NET code, with all of the latest fixes, enhancements, etc:

Web Page: http://www.southern-storm.com.au/portable_net.html
Download: http://www.southern-storm.com.au/download/pnet-0.4.0.tar.gz
Library:  http://www.southern-storm.com.au/download/pnetlib-0.2.4.tar.gz
Treecc:   http://www.southern-storm.com.au/download/treecc-0.1.2.tar.gz
PNetMark: http://www.southern-storm.com.au/download/pnetmark-0.0.3.tar.gz

See the appended NEWS entries for the full details.

Cheers,

Rhys.

Portable.NET 0.4.0 (27 June 2002)

Runtime engine:

* Implement a profile system that allows the engine to be built in
  various configurations, with certain features enabled or disabled.
* Object finalization.
* Throw "NotImplementedException" if an internalcall method is missing,
  or if an unsupported instruction is executed.
* Throw "MissingMethodException" if a PInvoke method is missing.
* Build and throw exceptions that are inserted by the verifier.
* LookupClass: detect classes in the "System" namespace correctly.
* Split "lib_platform.c" into multiple files, one per class, to
  make it easier to subset the feature set in profiles.
* Internalcalls for "TaskMethods", "Stdio", "RuntimeHelpers", "GC",
  "GCHandle", "Delegate", "WaitHandle", "Mutex", "TypedReference".
* Check for correct "box" operations in the verifier when primitive
  types are involved.
* Corrected the type inferencing for shift operations in the verifier.
* New CVM instructions: "monitor_enter", "monitor_exit", "local_alloc".
* Managed pointers can be assigned to any pointer destination when
  verifying in unsafe mode.
* Synchronous delegate support.
* Hook in the engine to support breakpoint debugging.
* The IL "break" instruction should verify as "nop", not "invalid".

C# Compiler:

* Helper function to resolve property names (Gopal V).
* Implement semantic analysis and code generation for "foreach"
  when collections are involved (Gopal V).
* #ifdef around missing YYEOF on some systems (found by Sammy Mannaert
  <address@hidden>).
* Handle forward declarations of constants properly.

Documentation and Samples:

* Document how the runtime engine can be stripped down to run
  on embedded systems.
* Bug fix to "FullNameSP" generation in "csdoc".
* New "csdoc2hier" program, for dumping class heirarchies.
* Report the library that a type/member is declared within.

Assembler:

* Apply fixups to class references in exception catch blocks.
* Set the default parent class to "System.Object" if unspecified.

Debugger:

* Loading and running of applications (no breakpoints yet).
* Synthesise source for classes that lack debug symbol information.

Loader and Metadata:

* Create a "small" opcode table for use in the verifier, which does
  not need the names of the opcodes.
* Fix back-patching of field RVA's.
* Never link program items to themselves.

Platform Support:

* Update libffi sources from the gcc CVS repository.
* Fix a pre-processor problem in libffi on Solaris.
* Work around versions of grep and sed that aren't fully GNU-ish.
* Replacement garbage collector for low-memory environments.
* Add some debug code to allow memory usage to be tracked.
* Use a temporary file in "gen_errno.sh" instead of stdin, because
  some C compilers cannot read source from standard input (e.g. hpux).
* Detect the "nsl" and "socket" libraries on platforms that need them.
* Centralise Ansi encoding routines into "support".

Other:

* Add "pnet_build.sh", for assisting people who wish to automate builds.
* Implemented the "clrwrap" program, which makes it easier to run
  IL-format binaries on Unix systems, by way of a small wrapper script.
* Add missing ".h" files to the install list for "include".
* Support definition profiles in "csant" to assist with subsetting pnetlib.
* Repurpose "ilcheck" for checking PInvoke calls (Gopal V).

pnetlib 0.2.4 (27 June 2002)

* Harden various classes against missing functionality in the
  runtime engine, when the engine is used a reduced profile.
* SocketAddress mostly complete (Charlie Carnow).
* String resources now work.
* NotImplementedException, AsyncResult, WeakReference, GCHandle, GC.
* Updates to Delegate classes to support the runtime engine.

treecc 0.1.2 (27 June 2002)

* Add some patches to support out of tree builds (Stephen Compall).
* Make the build system more automake 1.5 friendly.
* Work around versions of "sed" that don't support "-" for stdin.

PNetMark 0.0.3 (27 June 2002)

* Don't search for ilrun_opt any more, because it is obsolete.
* Detect when the runtime engine does not have floating point,
  and continue operations with the non-float benchmarks only.
* Polish the FAQ a little bit.
* Add install support for pnetmark using clrwrap.