[Mono-list] ILX: Extending MSIL for Functional Language Interoperability

[Tyson Dowd]

On 07-Sep-2001, Miguel de Icaza <miguel@ximian.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hey Leen!
> 
> > I don't know whether someone has reported this already, but
> > anyway. At Microsoft Research they are working on an extended
> > version of MSIL, specifically for functional languages. Maybe
> > something we can implement in Mono as well someday. It probably
> > isn't the final version, but the sooner you hear about this, the
> > better. A publication can be found at
> > http://research.microsoft.com/projects/ilx/. Take a look at the
> > personal website as well, there is some interesting stuff over
> > there.
> 
> Thanks for posting this url.  It would be very good to have Mono
> support those features as well.  
> 
> What I like the most about that site (and the personal site from Dom
> Syme linked from there) is that they are actively looking/researching
> how to extend the CIL byte code to handle existing issues with it. 

Don Syme presented a paper ILX at BABEL 01 in Firenze (Florence) on
Saturday.  One of the things he mentioned is that the parametric
polymorphism (generics) is likely to make it into .NET version 1.1 or
2.0.

Don's work has been very good and looks very useful -- I really hope
that it can be incorporated into other .NET implementations one day too.
I'm also hoping to try to (optionally) target the Mercury compiler at ILX.

Tyson.