[Mono-list] reflector and contributing

[Daniel Hughes]

At work we are trying to port  our application to mono so we can run
it on ubuntu. We have it very close to working with the exception of
the serial coms.

The SerialPort implementation in mono has a few bugs and missing
features which means our code does not work. Some of these are minor
and we have been able to work around, others are fundamental and are
currently blocking us.

I have found through question here and on the bug tacker that this is
an obscure part of the code that is not widely used and requires
special hardware to work on (a cheap PCI serial card with two ports
and a cable configured for crossover.) As a consequence of this it is
very unlikely that the SerialPort implementation will ever be
completed.

I have considered the possibility of contributing some patches which
would improve things somewhat however one thing is holding me back.

I have used reflector to look at the some of the Microsoft dotnet
class libraries. I imagine that most dotnet developer worth hiring
have done the same. Not only does this exclude me but their is not a
single person on my team at work that has not done so and thus
excluded themselves from contributing.

I would like to know exactly how strict this rule is.

As already stated I have used reflector on some of the base class
libraries. However if I have not used reflector on the method I want
to contribute to am I still excluded?

More specifically I have used reflector to look at the dotnet
implementation of System.IO.Ports.SerialPort.GetPortNames(). However I
have not looked at an other part of the SerialPort code.

Does this exclude me from fixing the ReadTimeout Method. Or trying to
implement the DataReceived event.

PS We have been able to work around the ReadTimeout problem and we
tried to work around the DataReceived problem by polling the
BytesToRead and raising the event manually. However we could not meet
the timing requirements of the protocol we use with this method
without trashing the CPU.