[Mono-list] CLI and devices

[Greg Haerr]

> > The mindstorms have too little memory to run any CLR.
> 
> I agree, mindstorms have very limited resources:
> 8-bit CPU (H8) and 32 KB RAM (if I remember correclty).
> 
> Nonetheless, something like JavaCard may be possible

For an extremely compact java-subset interpreter, written
in C but using Java as the applications language, you might
look at http://tinyvm.sourceforge.net/, which runs in
10k bytes on the RCX.  It's got a subset of the java
core classes, threads, exceptions, and synchronization,
and installs/compiles using Cygwin.  This leaves
22k bytes for user programs (wow! ;-)

Although both Mono and .Net target much larger
devices, it might be interesting to keep the C# language
capability across a broad range of devices.  The
Portable.Net compiler can optionally emit java byte
codes, thus allowing the compiler to possibly be used
for more than it's own execution environment.  Certainly
the design the MS CLR was for JIT speed and 
multiple language compilation, as opposed to the Java
design, but it still would be cool to have C# running
on more systems.

Regards,

Greg




> * Very limited libs;
> * No garbage collection;
> * No floating point;
> * No threads;
> * Modified binary format (with preprocessing);
> * interpreter coded in assembler;