[Mono-list] Difference between mono and mint ?

A Rafael D Teixeira rafael.teixeirabr@terra.com.br
Mon, 07 Jun 2004 11:03:54 -0300


On Mon, 2004-06-07 at 06:12, HannibAl Bundie wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm sorry, but I don't understand the difference between the runtimes mono 
> and mint. The web page about the Mono runtime on www.go-mono.com doesn't 
> satisfy me.

Mono is a JIT runtime, what means that as needed it gets the bytecode
for a method and compiles on first use to machine language for the
processor the runtime was compiled and must be running on.

Mint is a interpreter, what means that it just gets the bytecode and
iterates over it executing routines for the appropriate opcode found.

Mono gives you the best performance, but must support your hardware
architecture. Mint is more portable as it is expressed in C and does
things in the most architecture-independent way possible, but as
performance is normally very important it is just used as porting helper
while the archicteture isn't mapped inside Mono (the runtime).

Hope it helps,

-- 
Rafael "Monoman" Teixeira 
Mono Hacker since 16 Jul 2001 - http://www.go-mono.org/
Mono Brasil Founding Member - http://monobrasil.redesolbrasil.org/
English Blog: http://monoblog.blogspot.com/
Brazilian Portuguese Blog: http://monoblog.weblogger.terra.com.br/