[Mono-devel-list] un-interoperatible classes .NET -> Mono remoting

[Jonathan Pryor]

On Tue, 2004-09-28 at 04:07, Aleksandar Dezelin wrote:
> does anybody knows what classes are un-interoperatible between Mono and
> .NET regarding remoting? I've found thar Hashtable is one of them but I
> don't understand why? Can somebody explain this topic little further?

It should be noted (because I haven't seen anyone else mention it) that
remoting is ONLY guaranteed to work if you're using the same runtime
version on both ends.  This applies to *both* mono and .NET.

In particular, remoting between .NET 1.0 and .NET 1.1 WILL NOT ALWAYS
WORK.  If *anything* of the internal structure of a class changes,
remoting fails.  Consequently, .NET 2.0 and .NET 1.x are also not likely
to work in all circumstances either.

Wanting Mono to interoperate with all versions of .NET is asking for a
bit much, especially when Microsoft can't do the same thing.

Which leaves you with the suggested solution: take control of
serialization yourself, so that *you* can ensure that all platforms are
compatible.  This can be done through Jason King's middle layers, or
though web services, or through some other mechanism.

The key point is that you CANNOT rely on the default remoting
functionality when you have different CLI implementations on either end
of the remoting boundary.  Remoting is very brittle.  Which is probably
why Microsoft is working on Indigo for the .NET 2.0 remoting solution,
which will merge remoting, web services, and related functionality.

 - Jon