[Mono-announce-list] Quick Mono Update

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hey guys!

   Wow, it has been a while since I have posted an update.  I have tried
to keep the www.go-mono.com web site up to date with the breaking news,
but you might not follow that.

   There are various interesting developments recently:

	* The JIT engine pretty much runs all the code that Dietmar has
	  thrown at it.  The original register allocator was very naive,
	  so Dietmar worked towards making it better, and got a 2x 
	  improvement with some work.

	  The next step is for doing register allocation based on loop
	  patterns, a standard mechanism, but right now our focus is 
	  into making the code feature complete before we optimize the
	  JITer.

	* Dick has been busily working on our io-layer (this was
	  discussed a few weeks ago), it is our wrapper for system calls
	  in order to make Linux look more like Win32.

	  The basics for IO and synchronization are there, the next step
	  is to get sockets in place and we should be ready on that 	  front.

	* Paolo has been steadily working on our System.Reflection.Emit
	  implementation (this requires a tight connection between the
	  runtime and the class libraries).   The System.Reflection.Emit
	  code is a fundamental piece of code for making our C# 	 
self-hosting.  Plus many bug fixes to our class libraries.

	* C# compiler land: Ravi and I have been finishing the various 
	  bits of the compiler. PInvoke, Events, finishing the various
	  bits on properties (make them as complete as methods, which is
	  where I spent most of my time).

	  Explicit interface implementation is finally here with us,
	  so many more tests are finished.

	  I had to rework a few pieces in the compiler because of the
	  restrictions on the use of the ret opcode.

	  The Member Lookup code rewrite finally enabled me to implement
	  the `base' operator.   This is the last chunk of the
	  expressions that was missing.  Statements are complete as
 	  well.

	  The pre-processor for the compiler should be done tonight
	  hopefully before I go to see Lord of the Ring.

	* Class libraries: for those of you who do not watch the CVS 	  commits
list: Gaurav is making steady progress on various
	  classes on the System.Web.UI universe.

Non-development news:

   DDJ published an article I wrote with Brian Jepson of O'Reilly on the
internals of Mono.  My original draft was more detailed that what got
published though.  I will ask for permission to post the full details,
because it talks about the internals of the JITer and the Compiler (for
those interested).

   Microsoft is running an interview that Dare did a few months ago for
Kuroshin on Mono (it is currently in: http://msdn.microsoft.com [1]).

   Oh, and merry Christmas/holidays to all of you.

Release:

   Since you can get Mono in an up-to-date basis from AnonCVS or from
the snapshots (which I just found out got broken on the 11th, mhm) I
have been lazy and avoided making a release of Mono, but I will be doing
one this week before the holidays (you really can get every bit I will
be releasing from cvs though ;-).  

Miguel.

[1] The real article is:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/Dndotnet/html/deicazainterview.asp?frame=true