[Mono-announce-list] More progress!

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hey guys!

   If you have not been watching the cvs list, you might not know
this: Paolo as of today got our System.Reflection.Emit implementation
up to the point of being able to generate a .NET executable (currently
it only has a "ret" instruction on the stream) using our interpreter
and our libraries on Linux.

   The C# compiler is rapidly maturing.  The last week we have been
focusing on making the features complete (so operator overloading
works, most conversions work now, interfaces and method
implementations are now correct).  There are a few holes in the
compiler yet to fill, but we have decided to make the existing code
base bug free before we take on new code bits [1].

   Dick has got the Threads and Monitor implementations in place as
well, so simple threaded applications can be executed (thread support
is required to deploy the garbage collection system, so that is
pending until we have a fully working threading system). 

   Mike Kestner and Bob Smith have been working on Gtk#, the native
bindings to Gtk to write applications with .NET.  This will probably
be our first binding for writing GNOME apps with Mono, before we have
an implementation of Windows.Forms.

   The test suite for the compiler, the interpreter and the JIT has
become really important for us now.  It has allowed us to keep an eye
on how the project progresses without taking steps backwards.

   I would like to ask people who have written code for the class
libraries, or those of you that want to contribute but do not have a
lot of time to contribute to the class library test suite.  Something
that would allow us to keep working and not break the code in subtle
ways as we advance. 

[1] (following Joel's advise to fix bugs before writing new code).

Best wishes,
Miguel.