[Mono-dev] Mono port for AIX and PASE on IBM i

[Bill Seurer]

I've been getting a LOT of questions about this lately so I thought I 
should let people know what's up.

I was part of a group that in the summer of 2006 ported Mono to run 
on PASE on IBM i (aka AS/400 and i5/OS).  PASE is a runtime 
environment which is really AIX so AIX programs can usually run 
without change under PASE and vice-versa.  Anyway, we mostly finished 
and could run .net programs just fine.  There was still some work to 
do on function calls that had prevented us from getting some of the 
libraries to work when the time for the project ran out.  I continued 
tinkering with it for a few months but despite my interest in 
continuing (and my area's interest) I've had to move on to other projects.

Unfortunately the licenses under which Mono is developed were 
disagreeable to the local lawyers and so it has sat in limbo ever since.

I've been contacted many times since then so there is still interest out there.

A couple people have asked me how much work it was to do the port.  I 
spent probably 4 or 5 months of effort on it and I worked with a team 
of 4 interns who spent 3 months working on it.  Of course some of 
that time was learning about Mono and .net in general and not 
actually working on the port itself.  I don't know what the code is 
like in the current Mono release so I don't know if it would be more 
or less difficult now.