[Mono-list] Mono Stack

[Kenneth Rohde Christiansen]

Hi there,

Within the last week there has been talk about a Mono Stack on Monologue
and Planet.Gnome. 

Judging from http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/tmp/two-stacks.png the
Mono stack seem to consist of various libraries like Mono.Cairo, Novell.
Directory.Ldap, Mono.Data.DB2Client, Mono.Posix, Gtk, Pango etc.

I think it is a very good idea that many of these are using the Mono
namespace. That at least makes me think that the included technology is
a preferred technology when developing for Linux with Mono.

It would be nice if we could namespace all of the technologies supposed
to be part of the Mono stack, so we don't run into the C library
problem: For newbies it is not obvious which XML library to use with
GNOME since libxml isn't very descriptive. Was it called Gnome.XML it
would be quite obvious on the other hand.

Why not namespace things that are part of the mono stack, like Gtk#, as
Mono.Gtk or Mono.UI.Gtk (or similar) or Evolution# as Mono.Desktop.
DataServer (someone can probably find a more appropriate name). Then we
also get rid of the # naming scheme.

Maybe it is also a good idea discussing what the Mono stack should
consist of and how it should be namespaced. For instance bluetooth
support could go in Mono.Hardware.IR.Bluetooth This means that people
who wants to add bluetooth bindings today can work with the Mono
community to create a good API/binding with the goal of being a part of
the (official) Mono stack.

That way we get "official" Mono approved assemblies which have went
though API review, instead of 1000 different weirdly named assemblies
(MyCode.LibBF for instance) that might or might not be preferred when
developing for Linux.

Maybe we should create a Mono Stack discussion group who could try
laying out what a Mono stack should include and now it should be
organized and what underlying technologies it should use. Then it will
be easier to contribute for people interesting in working on the Mono
stack.

Just a thought,
Kenneth