[Mono-list] Update on tasks (a compromise solution?) & Java notes

[Robert Deviasse]

>Obviously I can't speak for Rhys, but if it were me, I would find
>this a terrible solution that would just make me lose even more
>interest in working on the project than I already have from being
>snuffed in the first place. "Yeah, our project needs to grow quickly,
>and needs to get more developers on board now by having something
>that works, so we'll brand what you have under the Mono banner and
>slowly replace it as we build technology we like better."  Imagine if you 
>were the person on the other side of the deal... would you be
>that happy with this solution?

But right now, that's already happening. Mono's current solution
is "use Microsoft's .Net SDK" to develop. I can't imagine why anyone
would feel this solution would be better than using what's available on
either Microsoft .Net or on Unix. While the *foundations* of Mono are
tied to Windows, it's limited in two ways: (1) fewer Unix programmers
can contribute, (2) portability issues are hidden because Mono only has
to run on one platform. The longer portability issues remain hidden,
the more painful it will be to fix them, so they should be caught as
early as possible.

Mono doesn't have to brand any technology that's available under the
Mono brand, but it would be nice if Mono and Portable.NET could agree
on *temporary* Unix runnable *foundation* technology. What I'm
suggesting isn't too radical. It's called bootstrapping.

>...
>Due to my goals (which involve my original plans of unifying this
>with my decompiler and having the stages defined very cleanly with an
>XML step or two), this gives plenty of time for people to try to beat
>me to the punch by modifying guavac.  However, unlike the metadata
>parsing library project that people killed, I am happy to say that
>this project is one where even if I release mine months after other
>people both release and are already using theirs, I can still have a 
>worthwhile application, and therefor will continue developing it
>regardless.

It sounds like you have a great solution, but I don't think what I've
said should affect you (assuming anyone else agrees with what I
suggested). I was talking about bootstrapping the foundation so that it
could run on Unix or Windows. Language implementations for .Net, in my
book at least, are peripheral technologies. Any drastic change in the
foundations will have a drastic affect on your project, but the reverse
isn't true. You've basically stated this when you said "I'm unlikely to
...integrate with the Mono environment, although I doubt that is much
of an issue".

>What I'm doing isn't a perfect fit, but you can't
>correctly compile Java to .NET anyway (due to the differing
>methodologies on permissions and entry points), so anything you do is
>a hack.
>

I don't think anyone would expect this. From my understandings, Jython
(Python for JVM) can't be completely compatible with CPython for the
same reasons. Sure Jython could implement a completely compatible
Python interpreter on top of the JVM, but it would lose all the
advantages of being able to directly use Java objects and have Python
objects directly be used by Java objects.

Take care,
    Robert


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