[Mono-dev] Porting runtime - where to start?

[virgile.bello at free.fr]

Quoting Paolo Molaro <lupus at ximian.com>:

> On 04/03/07 virgile.bello at free.fr wrote:
> > > Was anyone able to determine if the old XBOX (x86) emulator or the xbox
> > > 360 CLR runtime do any jitting? It would be very surprising if they
> > > didn't do it and if they did, the European Commission is very likely
> > > interested in how they do it (hint, hint:-).
> >
> > I think the XBOX 360 CLR runtime does JITing, but well, Microsoft got a
> better
> > access to console internal than us.
>
> Sure, that's a good reason for the European commission to investigate
> why they still adopt anti-competitive practices. If they do jitting,
> other people developing for the platform should be allowed to have the
> info do it as well. Hopefully the game industry will pressure them as
> well.


By the way, I sent yesterday a mail to MS in that sense. But well, we all know
how it will end :)

>
> > The XBOX360 changes are pointless since it seems not possible to make it
> > working.
>
> There is definitely interest and it is likely possible to make it work
> using the AOT backend and the PE file converter you mentioned, so I
> don't think the changes are pointless: they will enable other interested
> people to help you with your efforts. If you have other reasons that
> prevent you from contributing the code that's understandable.
>

No, that's no problem for me to release it (still it would need some polishing
before doing so). However, I also had to port glibc first, so it's kinda messy.
What I dont know is if it's legal to release code using this xdk, since it's not
available for public... (even headers). I'll ask and let you know.

> > About the debugger, it's more a prototype right now, but I will probably
> work on
> > it again if the code to get my monobind wrapper working is included in mono
> > source tree (I posted the patch at
> > http://lists.ximian.com/pipermail/mono-devel-list/2007-March/022949.html, I
> > dunno if it was the right place for that).
>
> I'll review it in a bit, I was on vacation the last few days.
>
> > Nevertheless, if it never happens, I might drop the sources of that
> prototype as
> > a base (I nearly managed to do singlestepping and variable inspection with
> class
> > definition extracted from runtime context).
>
> Did you check the mono*describe* functions in
> metadata/class-internals.h?

Yes, that's what I use if I remember right. Introspection is done with mono api
itself (and that's why it is nice ! ;p).