[mono-vb] Contribute to VB.Net Mono

[Rolf Bjarne Kvinge]

Hi,

Andy has explained very well where you can contribute, I've included a
couple of comments inline.

> 
> Speaking only as a user of the Mono project, here's my view.  The best
> way to contribute just now will be to use it!  Simple as that...  Find
> what works and what doesn't and create bug reports.
> 
> 
> Or in longer form...  Take any programs you have from VB.NET on Windows
> and use them on Mono (on Linux), and that tests the 'runtime'.  Also
> then use the compiler too.  I've done some basic testing to ensure it
> can compile WinForms apps (bug 333403 fixed, bug 333962 outstanding).
> I had little success with monodevelop and xbuild, so that was using
> MSBuild on Windows to drive vbnc.  So there's work there too; to find
> out what's needed, if anything, to have the two systems compile VB
> projects.  Also try compiling various forms of WinForms apps, those
> that use the 'single instance' feature, settings, resources and such
> features in the special My object tree.  
>
> Also on monodevelop, does it handle creating VB projects from scratch etc.
> 

Unfortunately not much work has gone into making VB projects work well in
MonoDevelop (most of the code is several years old, and has not been updated
for vbnc), here is one area where contributions are welcome.

> Then there's ASP.NET web sites and web services etc, they need test
> too. As you yourself pointed out on this list. :-)  That tests the
compiler
> too of course.
> 
> On the compiler I see two levels of 'bugs'.  On the first type, it
> would probably be very useful to ensure that the compiler can handle all
> language features -- one could even start at the beginning of the
> language spec and work to the end and hopefully test all the features
> that way. :-)  However, 'error handling' isn't implemented yet, so, in
> my opinion, it's not useful to create reports of 'bad behaviour on this
> bad code'.  Easy to do, but IMHO not of much use until Rolf starts
> implementing this feature.
> 

As Andy says vbnc does not cope well with bad code, and I'm aware of this
(no need to file bugs). I figured it was much more important to compile
correct code, so that's where I've spent my time. Which means that if you
have correct VB code that doesn't compile with vbnc, please do file bugs :)

> I don't know about contributing code, maybe there's need for missing
> features.  I don't know; according to the class-status pages the
> runtime is complete -- however I think it doesn't reports which method
just
> throw NotImplementedException...
> 

This is probably the easiest way to contribute if you want to write code:
find any method in the vbruntime that throws a NotImplementedException and
implement it. The class-status isn't very helpful here, it'll show
everything as complete, which isn't true.

Rolf

> Andy
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: mono-vb-bounces at lists.ximian.com
> > [mailto:mono-vb-bounces at lists.ximian.com] On Behalf Of Lennie
> > De Villiers
> > Sent: 22 October 2007 07:18
> > To: mono-vb at lists.ximian.com
> > Subject: [mono-vb] Contribute to VB.Net Mono
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > How can I contribute to development of VB.Net Mono?
> >
> > Kind Regards,
> >
> > Lennie De Villiers
> > _______________________________________________
> > Mono-vb mailing list
> > Mono-vb at lists.ximian.com
> > http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-vb
> 
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