[DotGNU]Re: [Mono-list] Mono / C# on PDAs

[Stefan Matthias Aust]

Gopal V wrote:

> Pnet ran a hello world 10k stack and 200k heap  (for IL) with a full
> build then .. should be a lot smaller for a trimmed down build ...

Even the most current Java VM from Sun has the problem that each 
application has its own heap which contains its own copy of the classes, 
duplicating everything.  Normally, this is no problem on desktop PCs but 
for a PDA with restricted memory, that can become an issue.

Can mono/pnet share system classes (loaded from mscore.dll and other 
libs) or will it behave like Sun's Java VM?

> > I would love to see a Qt# application  running on the zaurus!
>
> If libffi does not work in ARM ... PInvoke is out of the way... Still
> someone can write a new ilrun.c embedding QT as a set of internal calls.
> And avoid the hassle of porting libffi ...

Some questions: libffi allows to call named functions from shared 
libraries, right?  It's a library unrelated to pnet, right?  IIRC, 
Squeak Smalltalk for Unix also requires libffi for its foreign function 
interface...  You say, it's not yet available for the Zaurus?  So using 
"internal calls" (whatever that is) means to redo the Qt bindings?  This 
could easily become a large amount of work, perhaps larger that porting 
libffi.  Would internal calls also be specific to pnet?  Advantageously 
  might be, doing direct C++ (?) calls might be more efficient...

> Pnet has a JIT ... but not a native JIT ... pnet JITs IL into a 
> simpler non-polymorphic code called CVM ... Which is a lot faster to 
> run than the direct IL interpreters ...

So, not caring about the politically correctness and/or the pureness of 
freedom, and assuming, that the same IL code can run with both mono and 
pnet, it looks like the best way is to start with pnet as this might run 
right now and then - possibly - switch to mono once there's a 
native-code-compiling-JIT for the ARM processor.

Thanks for all that info.


bye
-- 
Stefan Matthias Aust   //
www.3plus4software.de // Inter Deum Et Diabolum Semper Musica Est