[Mono-devel-list] Embedding Mono in a Virtual World

[Jim Purbrick]

Hi Kelly,

--- Kelly Leahy <kellyleahy at swbell.net> wrote:
> I don't see how this could possibly work if the
> managed code objects you are trying to persist deal
> in any way with resources outside of the managed 
> world.

They don't. Scripts can call C library functions, but
don't need to be be transferred during a library call.
Scripts can also register event handlers, but the
information about which events the script is waiting
for can be transferred as part of the script object.

> For instance, I assume threads are implemented as
> either some pthreads based objects or some windows
> threads objects (in the kernel sense of the word
> object, of course) and you cannot possibly expect
> anything running in the managed world to know how to
> "persist" these things unless the managed objects
> specifically know how to do this (i.e. are designed
> to support this functionality).

I agree. In order for this to work at all care has to
be taken that scripts can't get too entangled with the
server they are currently running on. As a note of
encouragement, this system currently works using
interpreted byte code. The text, stack and heap of the
script is contained within a single 16K blob which can
be shunted across to another server. The complication
with the proposed mono implementation is that the
stack, heap and text aren't so neatly packaged.

> Or am I missing the point?

No, I think your concerns are all valid.

Cheers,

Jim.

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