[Mono-announce-list] Mono 0.17 has been released

[Miguel de Icaza]

    Hello!

	Version 0.17 of Mono has been released.

	There are plenty of new features, bug fixes, new classes, 
	performance improvements, optimizations and much more
	available in this release.

* Availability

	* Source code:

		http://www.go-mono.com/archive/mono-0.17.tar.gz
		http://www.go-mono.com/archive/mcs-0.17.tar.gz

		To install mono from source code you only need the
		first one (mono), as it contains pre-compiled versions
		of the compiler and the class libraries.

	* Packages for Linux:

		Precompiled packages with full debugging information
		in Dwarf-2 format (so you can use the soon to be
		released Mono debugger with it) is available for
		various distributions.  

		Packages are available either on the `Mono' Red Carpet
		channel, or you can download your rpms, and source
		rpms from www.go-mono.com/download.html

	* XSP ASP.NET Web server

		http://www.go-mono.com/archive/xsp-0.2.tar.gz

		No packages were made of the XSP server, but its so
		small that you should have no problem compiling and
		running it. 

	Sadly the Mono BASIC compiler patches did not make it to this
	release, but will be available on the next release.

* Stats

	2605 cvs commits to the Mono repository since October 1st, an
	average of 37 commits per day including weekends.  

	212 commits to the Mono module.
	1438 commits to the MCS module.

* Mono Improvements:

	Work has begun to make the runtime run a finalizer thread and
	invoke all the finalizers from this thread.  This is the same
	behavior as Java and the Microsoft runtime, but it is disabled
	on this build.

	Integrated the Linux/s390 work from Neale Ferguson.

	Beginning of the work for pre-compiling code (Ahead of time
	compilation) for Mono (based on the early work of Zoltan).

	New option `--noboundscheck' for benchmark purposes, it
	disables array bound checks.
	
	Uses mmap instead of SysV shared memory for the Windows API
	emulation layer.

	Plenty of bug fixes, improvements and integration with the
	upper layer class libraries.

	New exception handling code uses the GCC native support for
	stack-walking if available and gives big performance boost
	(15% on mcs bootstrap).

	A lot of the work in the new release of Mono is required for
	the Mono Debugger (which will be released separately).  The
	Mono debugger is interesting, because it can debug both
	managed and unmanaged applications, but it only supports the
	JITer for debugging.

	Dick, Dietmar, Gonzalo, Martin and Paolo were in charge of
	most of these changes.

* Compiler improvements:

	Many bug fixes as usual, better C# compliancy.

	Performance improvements.  The new release of the Mono C#
	compiler is 37% faster than the previous version (self-compile
	is down to 8 seconds).  On my P4 1.8Ghz machine, the Mono C#
	compiler compiles (342,000 lines per minute).

	Thanks to go Ravi and Martin for helping out with the bug
	fixing hunt.

* Cryptography and Security classes

	Sebastien Pouliot and Andrew Birkett were extremely busy
	during the past two months working on the cryptography
	classes, many of the crypto providers are now working

	Jackson on the other hand helped us with the security
	classes, he said about those:

	`Writing security classes is the most exciting thing I have
	ever done, I can not wait to write more of them'.

* ASP.NET:

	We have now moved the code from the XSP server (which was our
	test bed for ASP.NET) into the right classes inside
	System.Web, and now any web server that was built by using the
	System.Web hosting interfaces can be used with Mono.

	The sample XSP server still exists, but it is now just a
	simple implementation of the WorkerRequest and ApplicationHost
	classes and can be used to test drive ASP.NET.  A big thanks
	goes to Gonzalo who worked on this night and day (mostly
	night).

	Gaurav keeps helping us with the Web.Design classes, and
	improving the existing web controls. 

* ADO.NET:

	New providers are available in this release.  The relentless
	System.Data team (Brian, Dan, Rodrigo, Tim and Ville) are
	hacking non-stop on the databse code.  Improving existing
	providers, and new providers.  

	The new providers on this release:

		* Oracle
		* MS SQL 
		* ODBC
		* Sybase
		* Sqlite (for embedded use).

	Many regression tests have been added as well (Ville has been
	doing a great job here).

	Brian also created a DB provider multiplexor (The ProviderFactory)

	Stuart Caborn contributed Writing XML from a DataSet.
	Luis Fernandez contributed constraint handling code.

	Also there is new a Gtk# GUI tool from Dan that can be used to
	try out various providers.

* System.XML:

	Atsushi has taken the lead in fixing and plugging the missing
	parts of the System.XML namespace, many fixes, many
	improvements.

* CodeDom and the C# provider.

	Jackson Harper has been helping us with the various interface
	classes from the CodeDOM to the C# compiler, in this release
	a new assembly joins us: Cscompmgd.  It is a simple assembly,
	and hence Microsoft decided not to waste an entire "System"
	"dot" on it.  

* Testing

	Nick Drochak has integrated the new NUnit 2.0 system.

* Monograph:

	Monograph now has a --stats option to get statistics on
	assembly code.
	

CVS Contributors to this release:

	Alejandro Sanchez, Alp Toker, Andrew Birkett, Atsushi Enomoto,
	Brian Ritchie, Cesar Octavio Lopez Nataren, Chris Toshok,
	Daniel Morgan, Daniel Stodden, Dennis Hayes, Dick Porter,
	Diego Sevilla, Dietmar Maurer, Duncan Mak, Eduardo Garcia,
	Ettore Perazzoli, Gaurav Vaish, Gonzalo Paniagua, Jackson
	Harper, Jaime Anguiano, Johannes Roith, John Sohn, Jonathan
	Pryor, Kristian Rietveld, Mads Pultz, Mark Crichton, Martin
	Baulig, Martin Willemoes Hansen, Miguel de Icaza, Mike
	Kestner, Nick Drochak, Nick Zigarovich, Paolo Molaro, Patrik
	Torstensson, Phillip Pearson, Piers Haken, Rachel Hestilow,
	Radek Doulik, Rafael Teixeira, Ravi Pratap, Rodrigo Moya,
	Sebastien Pouliot, Tim Coleman, Tim Haynes, Ville Palo,
	Vladimir Vukicevic, and Zoltan Varga.

	(Am sorry, I could not track everyone from the ChangeLog
	messages, I apologize in advance for the missing
	contributors).

Enjoy,
Miguel.