Fw: [Mono-list] How difficult mono porting to other platforms?e.g. Symbian

Serge serge@wildwestsoftware.com
Sun, 11 Aug 2002 18:38:31 +0300


> For symbian, it might be worth while porting the runtime to java and
> just reusing the class libraries. The OS calls then are all those entry
> points that are listed in metadata/icall.c.

Interesting idea.
On the other hand, it's possible to use off-line AOT compiler, something like Stryon iNET,
that compiles IL to Java sourcecode or directly to bytecodes + Java libs to emulate .NET framework.
Unfortunately Java under Symbian is not very fast :-)
And at the same time I'm personally not very excited about their achievements with iNET product.
In fact, I think that under Symbian (or PalmOS and the likes) the main advantage of using C#/CLR is
that it's ideally suited to replace C++ on these platforms, not Java. For things like games programming etc.


Sergey


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dick Porter" <dick@ximian.com>
To: <mono-list@ximian.com>
Sent: Saturday, August 10, 2002 2:36 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: [Mono-list] How difficult mono porting to other platforms?e.g. Symbian


> On Sat, 2002-08-10 at 11:03, Serge wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > > I was just thinking at how difficult would be porting the mono core to other platform (not unix-like) like SYMBIAN
> > 
> > In the case of Symbian, it's difficult, IMO.
> > Mono depends on some libraries, so porting these libs is the first step.
> > To make such port practical it would be desirable to reuse as much of the system resources as possible - such as Unicode stuff.
> > Symbian's native APIs are C++, so some adapter library will be needed.
> > I assume you're interested in porting to real device, not emulator, so maybe this will require some Thumb support.
> > 
> 
> For symbian, it might be worth while porting the runtime to java and
> just reusing the class libraries.  The OS calls then are all those entry
> points that are listed in metadata/icall.c.
> 
> (Just a random thought from a non-java hacker :) )
> 
> - Dick
> 
> 
>