[Mono-list] About .Net Compatibility

Jonathan Pryor jonpryor@vt.edu
Tue, 28 Oct 2003 07:34:56 -0500


See http://www.go-mono.com/faq.html, questions 57-63.  Pay particular
attention to questions 62 and 63.

In short, maybe.  It depends on your app.  To quote the more relevant
questions:

Question 61: Will applications run out the box with Mono?

Sometimes they will. But sometimes a .NET application might invoke Win32
API calls, or assume certain patterns that are not correct for
cross-platform applications.

Question 62: What is a 100% .NET application?

A `100% .NET application' is one that only uses the APIs defined under
the System namespace and does not use P/Invoke. These applications would
in theory run unmodified on Windows, Linux, HP-UX, Solaris, MacOS X and
others. 

Note that this requirement also holds for all assemblies used by the
application. If one of them is Windows-specific, then the entire program
is not a 100% .NET application.

Furthermore, a 100% .NET application must not contain non-standard data
streams in the assembly. For example, Visual Studio .NET will insert a
#- stream into assemblies built under the "Debug" target. This stream
contains debugging information for use by Visual Studio .NET; however,
this stream can not be interpreted by Mono (unless you're willing to
donate support).

Thus, it is recommended that all Visual Studio .NET-compiled code be
compiled under the Release target before it is executed under Mono.

Question 63: Can I execute my Visual Studio .NET program (Visual Basic
.NET, Visual C#, Managed Extensions for C++, etc.) under Mono?

Yes, with some reservations.

The .NET program must either be a 100% .NET application, or (somehow)
have all dependent assemblies available on all desired platforms. (How
to do so is outside the bounds of this FAQ.)

Mono must also have an implementation for the .NET assemblies used. For
example the System.EnterpriseServices namespace is part of .NET, but it
has not been implemented in Mono. Thus, any applications using this
namespace will not run under Mono.

With regards to languages, C# applications tend to be most portable.

Visual Basic .NET applications are portable, but Mono's
Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll implementation is incomplete. It is
recommended to either avoid using this assembly in your own code, only
use the portions that Mono has implemented, or to help implement the
missing features. Additionally, you can set 'Option Strict On', which
eliminates the implicit calls to the unimplemented
Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.ObjectType class. (Thanks to
Jörg Rosenkranz.)

Managed Extensions for C++ is least likely to operate under Mono. Mono
does not support mixed mode assemblies (that is, assemblies containing
both managed and unmanaged code, which Managed C++ can produce). You
need a fully-managed assembly to run under Mono, and getting the Visual
C++ .NET compiler to generate such an executable can be difficult. You
need to use only the .NET-framework assemblies, not the C libraries (you
can't use printf(3) for example.), and you need to use the linker
options /nodefaultlib /entry:main mscoree.lib in addition to the /clr
compiler flag. You can still use certain compiler intrinsic functions
(such as memcpy(3)) and the STL. You should also see Converting Managed
Extensions for C++ Projects from Mixed Mode to Pure Intermediate
Language at MSDN. Finally, you can use PEVERIFY.EXE from the .NET SDK to
determine if the assembly is fully managed.

Thanks to Serge Chaban for the linker flags to use.


 - Jon

On Mon, 2003-10-27 at 16:05, Carlos dos Santos wrote: 
> I have an application developed in Visual Studio .Net. This application 
> will run in Mono ?
> 
> Thanks.