[Mono-list] a Mac architecture port

Miguel de Icaza miguel@ximian.com
03 May 2002 06:24:48 -0400


Hello Chris,

>  I'm planning on purchasing an iBook this summer and I'd like to be able
> to hack up some c#. While i have an x86 machine, I'll be subjected to
> much travel and was wondering if someone could either "hook me up" with
> a project currently building mcs for ppc or give me some reference
> material to plan a port for ppc [I've had *some* experience with risc,
> and that was sparc so I guess I would need some technical documents,
> etc].

Well, the C# compiler is a single compiler that generates CIL code, so
the existing MCS compiler will work.  What requires porting and work on
the other hand is the runtime engine that will execute your CIL images. 

Radek has done some work on the interpreter, but you probably want to
have a JIT engine.

>  I'm almost certain a c# compiler doesn't exist for ppc architecture
> which would make mcs pretty difficult to port. This is sort of a
> "feasibility" post. I'm under the impression that I'm staring into a
> pretty deep river and am about to go in over my head ;)

As I said, Radek has a PowerPC port already, but it requires updating to
support the latest features (remoting and delegate support in the
runtime has not been added).

miguel