[Mono-list] Mono Roadmap.

Stephane Payrard Stephane Payrard <s.payrard@wanadoo.fr>
Tue, 1 Jan 2002 01:03:34 +0100


On Mon, 31 Dec 2001, Miguel de Icaza wrote:


> 
> 
> Hello guys,
> 
>    Various people have been asking me privately how the different
> pieces of the JIT engine, the compiler and the class libraries fit
> together, and how these relate to the recent announcements I have been
> posting every day on the status of Mono.
> 
> * A Self Hosting Environment
> 
> 	A Self Hosting environment means that it will be possible to 
> 	develop and contribute to Mono on non-Windows platforms with 
> 	the Mircrosoft .NET SDK.
> 
> 	Given that our compiler is written in C# and that you will
> 	most likely want to use C# to build your applications, this
> 	means that the following things must happen:
> 
> 		* The C# compiler is complete and robust enough to
> 		  allow the ongoing development of the compiler itself
> 	  	  and the Mono class libraries.
> 
> 		* The JIT engine is available and mature enough to run
> 	  	  and execute the C# compiler and the class libraries.
> 
> 		* The class libraries on which the C# compiler depends
> 	  	  have enough functionality and are robust enough to
> 	  	  host the compiler.
> 
> * The C# compiler status
> 
> 	The C# compiler has to go through a number of phases:
> 
> 		* The compiler parses itself (April 2001)
> 
> 		* The compiler can compile itself (December 2001)
> 
> 		* The compiler generates correct CIL output (work in
> 	  	  progress, 146 out of 150 errors have been fixed,
> 	  	  only 4 more errors remain).
> 
> 		* The compiler generates correct code for itself.
> 
> 	Note that there is a difference between correct CIL output and
>   	correct code.  Correct CIL output means that the code is
>   	"syntactically" ok to be executed by a JIT engine.  But that
>   	does not mean that the code generated is correct.  That is the
>   	next phase.
> 
> * The JIT status
> 
> 	The JIT engine on Intel x86 is mature enough to run pretty
>   	much anything we throw at it.  It is lacking a GC engine, but
>   	we are going to be deploying it in January.
> 
> 	After the JIT engine becomes feature complete we will be
>   	working on optimization of the code generated, for now we will
>   	focus on making the VM complete (For example, there are still
>   	various issues that need to be addressed, like the stack
>   	waking to enable the security system, enable the GC, etc).
> 
> 	For systems where the JIT has not been ported, we do provide
>   	an interpreter which has also been pretty robust since October
>   	this year.  The interpreter is obviously slower than the JIT
>   	engine, and it is only intended to be used as a quick way of
>   	running your applications on platforms where the JIT engine
>   	does not exist.
> 
> 	The major reason why an application would not run on Mono
>   	right now is because the class libraries that they require are
>   	either not present or are incomplete.
> 
> 	Dietmar has a number of pending patches to go into CVS, but he
>   	could not get them into CVS before he went into vacation to
>   	give us a window to fix last minute problems, so those patches
>   	have not made it into CVS.  They add full unicode support
>   	through Glib/libiconv to Mono.
> 
> * The Class Libraries
> 
> 	From the compiler perspective, the major block requires is the
>   	System.Reflection.Emit API.  We have assembled enough
>   	information by constructing the compiler to know all the
>   	quirks that need to be implemented. 
> 
> 	The current implementation can be used to generate small
>   	application, but some bits are still missing.  Paolo has been
>   	working on this and has done a great job, but everytime I
>   	improved the compiler, I added a new dependency (not related
>   	to Reflection necessarly ;-).  
> 
> 	So that will be taken care of in January.  
> 
> 	Anyways, there are still a lot of other classes, more simple
>   	that need to be worked on.  As usual, we welcome your
>   	contributions.
> 
> 	Nick has a few ideas on how we can move along.  
> 
> 	There are many classes that have still missing pieces or miss
>   	a test suite.  And you have no idea how important is a test
>   	suite.  That is what has allowed us to produce a C# compiler
>   	in such a short time.  Without the test suite, we would have
>   	been lost.
> 
> Anyways, I am looking forward to write my next generation set of GUI
> applications using Mono ;-)



Can you post on the mono site a linux binary snapshot of mono so that
the happy guys who don't care about windows and are newcomers to mono
can bootstrap source versions of the compiler?

I gather it is probably a one time thing, one should be able to
compile later sources versions. Or in the contrary, new versions of
the compiler may depend on features missing from the current one?

Enquiring minds want to know.

> 
> Best wishes and Happy New Year!

Best wishes and Happy New Year!  

2001 ends very well, people reversed
engineered the windows driver of my Hi-Focus ADSL USB modem that was
unsupported on linux.

And now mono is bootstrapping itself!

> Miguel.
> 
> 
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-- 
Stéphane Payrard -- s.payrard@@wanadoo.fr

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