[Mono-list] Can MONO access the Windows Global Assembly Cache?

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hello,

> Welcome a new member to the MONO community. I have just compiled
> Mono 0.19 on my CygWin/Windows 2000 system. And I am about to perform
> some interoperability tests, trying to run Visual C# generated MSIL
> executables on MONO and vice versa.
> 
> So far I have encountered the problem that MONO did not find certain
> Assemblies located in the Global Assembly Cache (GAC).

Mono does not have an implementation of the GAC at this point, and it is
not able to use assemblies that are installed in the GAC.  

To use assemblies on the GAC, set your MONO_PATH environment variable to
point to the directory where the assemblies live.

> Will a loader for assemblies located in the GAC be a part of MONO
> in the future?

Yes.

> I am thinking about a scenario where MONO would be the preferred
> JIT, effectively replacing the Microsoft JIT. Why that? Well, maybe
> MONO will be faster than the Microsoft JIT in the future - or it
> can be better tuned/customized to speed up particular software
> applications, being shipped as part of these applications even.

There is still a lot of work to get there, but I have the same
idealistic view of things ;-)

Miguel