[Mono-dev] Mono profiles / .NET Framework versions

[Gert Driesen]

Hey,

On #mono, we (jb, grendel and myself) briefly discussed that way we're
currently splitting up assemblies and tools in profiles, and how we're
making specific profile versions of our tools accessible.

For assemblies, the consensus was to either have our profile versions
exactly match corresponding .NET Framework versions (eg. move System.Core,
System.Data.Linq, ... to the lib/mono/3.5 directory), or avoid confusion by
discarding the 3.5 "profile" altogether.

Currently some .NET 3.5 assemblies are part of the 3.5 profile directory
(eg. System.Web.Extensions.Design, and all of olive), and some are part of
the 2.0 profile (see above).

I think it's safe to say that we'd prefer to have a real 3.5 profile (jb and
grendel, correct me if I'm wrong).

For tools, grendel proposed to have our wrapper scripts accept a profile
version parameter. When the parameter is not specified, the scripts would
default to the lastest profile version. Both jb and myself liked this idea.

This would make it easier to have a toolchain that matches MS (eg. compilers
for both 1.0, 2.0 and 3.5 profile, instead of mixing 3.5 features in our 2.0
compiler), without having confusing script names.

This post is only here to start the discussion.

Hopefully this will lead to a well thought through solution.

Gert