[Mono-dev] What would you like to see in Mono?

[Joe Shaw]

Hi,

This stretched out a bit more than I originally intended. :)

On Tue, 2006-03-28 at 20:47 -0500, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
>      What would be the top feature you would like to see in Mono?

Although not really in Mono itself, one thing I would like to see is
better integration with automake.  The main Beagle Makefile.am is
currently 1181 lines.  There is definitely room for us to clean this up
substantially a bit on our own, but I've love to see things like
compilation handled automatically, installation of .mdb files, maybe
even automatic gacutil for assemblies, etc.

Beyond that, additional profiling tools would help a lot.  Specifically:

        * A profiler that tracked threads.
        
        * A profiler that tracked when files were opened and closed.
        
        * A profiler which detected potential deadlocks.
        
I'd recommend really investigating all the profilers and debugging tools
available for Java and then work on implementing them in Mono.  As I've
said to you personally many times before, the biggest difficulty in
developing applications in Mono at this point is a lack of high-quality
tools.

In addition, various bug fixes related to profiling: heap-buddy locks up
instantaneously on SMP machines (not sure if Jon ever filed that or had
just had discussions about it with Ben and others) and more robust
reporting of the stack traces of all threads with SIGQUIT.

It might also be helpful if the various profilers could be integrated
into MonoDevelop or something to give profiling info while the program
is running.  This data is most useful when it can be visualized.

Coverage tools, both at compile and runtime, integrated into Mono would
be handy.  I am sure .NET ones exist out there, but they're neither
immediately obvious nor immediately useful inside a Unix Mono
development environment.

And one thing that has always bugged me: my apps all behave strangely
and then crash when I recompile underneath a running instance.  That's
very annoying, and I suspect it's also a problem if you upgrade packages
and an app is running as well.

Joe