[Mono-dev] Mono for Symbian

[Neil Cowburn]

The work falls fairly squarely into three camps:

* Creating the PAL (Platform Adaption Layer)
* Optimizing the CLR
* Creating a subset of the class libraries

The CLR would need definitely need a fair amount of work so that it is
as optimized as it can be for the slow procs and low memory conditions.
The GC would need evaluating too. I'm not too familiar with the Mono GC,
but the .NET CF is a relatively simple mark & sweep GC (compared to the
generational GC in the .NET Framework). I know that the CF JIT is a
quite special case too. 

As for class libraries, Microsoft did a really good job with the .NET
Compact Framework. 80% of the functionality of the .NET Framework in 8%
of the footprint. That's fairly reasonable target, although it did leave
the door open for my company to step in and implement a good chunk of
missing functionality. 

--Neil


-----Original Message-----
From: andreas.faerber at web.de [mailto:andreas.faerber at web.de] 
Sent: 23 May 2007 21:01
To: Miguel de Icaza
Cc: Neil Cowburn; mono-devel-list at lists.ximian.com
Subject: Re: [Mono-dev] Mono for Symbian


>> Point taken, but it is (a variant of) Mono on Symbian. If proof  
>> was ever
>> needed that it can work, this would be an exemplar.
>
> I agree, yes.   So basically it is possible to do so.
>
> We have some experience from a few people that have done experimental
> ports of Mono to some proprietary embedded operating systems in the
> past, so we figured it was not impossible to do.

I did not want to imply it were not possible; I just raised the  
question of whether major changes might be necessary.

Andreas