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faq
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faq
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<a href="#basics">Basics</a><br>
<a href="#ximian">The Ximian Role in the Mono project</a><br>
<a href="#gnome">Mono and GNOME</a><br>
<a href="#gui">Building GUI applications with Mono</a><br>
<a href="#winforms">Mono and WinForms</a><br>
<a href="#msft">Mono and Microsoft</a><br>
<a href="#pnpproject">Mono and the Portable.NET Project</a><br>
<a href="#webservices">Web Services</a><br>
<a href="#asp">Mono and ASP.NET</a><br>
<a href="#ado">Mono and ADO.NET</a><br>
<a href="#devel">Development Tools and Issues</a><br>
<a href="#java">Mono and Java</a><br>
<a href="#extending">Extending Mono</a><br>
<a href="#portability">Portability</a><br>
<a href="#reuse">Reusing Existing Code</a><br>
<a href="#gcc">Mono and GCC</a><br>
<a href="#performance">Performance</a><br>
<a href="#licensing">Licensing</a><br>
<a href="#patents">Patents</a><br>
<a href="#etc">Miscellaneous Questions</a><br>
<a href="#problems">Mono Common Problems</a><br>
A <a
href="http://www.es.gnome.org/documentacion/articulos/MONO-PUF/MONO-PUF/">spanish
translation</a> is also available
<a name="basics"></a>
** Basics
Q: What is Mono exactly?
A: The Mono Project is an open development initiative sponsored by
Ximian that is working to develop an open source, Unix
version of the Microsoft .NET development platform. Its objective
is to enable Unix developers to build and
deploy cross-platform .NET Applications. The project will
implement various technologies developed by Microsoft that have now
been submitted to the ECMA for standardization.
Q: What is the difference between Mono and the .NET Initiative?
A: The ".NET Initiative" is a somewhat nebulous company-wide effort by
Microsoft, one part of which is a cross-platform development
framework. Mono is an implementation of the development framework,
but not an implementation of anything else related to the .NET
Initiative, such as Passport, software-as-a-service, or
corporate rebranding.
Q: What technologies are included in Mono?
A: Mono contains a number of components useful for building new
software:
<ul>
* A Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) virtual
machine that contains a class loader, Just-in-time
compiler, and a garbage collecting runtime.
* A class library that can work with any language
which works on the CLR.
* A compiler for the C# language. In the future we
might work on other compilers that target the Common
Language Runtime.
</ul>
Windows has compilers that target the virtual machine from <a
href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/net/thirdparty/default.asp#lang">a
number of languages:</a> Managed C++, Java Script, Eiffel,
Component Pascal, APL, Cobol, Perl, Python, Scheme,
Smalltalk, Standard ML, Haskell, Mercury and Oberon.
The CLR and the Common Type System (CTS) enables applications and
libraries to be written in a collection of different languages that
target the byte code
This means for example that if you define a class to do algebraic
manipulation in C#, that class can be reused from any other
language that supports the CLI. You could create a class in C#,
subclass it in C++ and instantiate it in an Eiffel program.
A single object system, threading system, class libraries, and
garbage collection system can be shared across all these languages.
Q: Where can I find the specification for these technologies?
A: You can find the work-in-progress documentation from the T3G ECMA
group here:
<a href="http://www.dotnetexperts.com">http://www.dotnetexperts.com</a>
Q: Will you implement the .NET Framework SDK class libraries?
A: Yes, we will be implementing the APIs of the .NET Framework SDK
class libraries.
Q: Will you offer an ECMA-compliant set of class libraries?
A: Eventually we will. Our current focus is on interoperating
with the Microsoft SDK, but we will also offer an ECMA compliant
set of libraries.
Q: What does the name "Mono" mean?
A: Mono is the word for `monkey' in Spanish. We like monkeys.
Q: Is Mono usable?
A: The JIT engine is usable on Intel x86 machines. An interpreter
can be used on other non-Intel x86 machines.
The class libraries are mature enough to run some real applications
(the compiler for instance, and every day more and more applications
are natively developed with Mono).
Q: When will you ship it?
A: Different parts of Mono will achieve usability at different stages,
once we are comfortable with the compiler, we will release "Mono Core",
which contains everything needed to develop applications with the base
class libraries. This should be available at some point during 2002.
Other higher level class libraries (ASP.NET, ADO.NET) will
be released when they become stable.
Q: What major components will you include in Mono?
A: Hopefully everything that Microsoft ships on their Framework
(ADO.NET, ASP.NET), and
we encourage third party developers to create reusable components that
work on both Mono and Windows.
Q: How can I contribute?
A: Check the <a href="contributing.html">contributing</a> section.
Q: Aren't you just copying someone else's work?
A: We are interested in providing the best tools for programmers to
develop applications for Free Operating Systems. We also want to help
provide the interoperability that will allow those systems to fit in
with other standards.
For more background, read the <a href="http://www.go-mono.com/rationale.html">Mono
Project white paper</a>.
the project.
Q: Miguel said once that Mono was being implemented in COBOL. Is that true?.
A: No. It was a joke.
<a name="ximian"></a>
** The Ximian Role in the Mono Project
Q: Why is Ximian working on .NET?
A: Ximian is interested in providing the best tools for programmers to
develop applications for Free Operating Systems.
For more information, read the project <a
href="rationale.html">rationale</a> page.
Q: Will Ximian be able to take on a project of this size?
A: Of course not. Ximian a supporter of the Mono project, but the only way
to implement something of this size is for the entire free software
community to get involved. Visit the <a href="contributing.html">contributing</a>
page if you'd like to help out.
Q: What pieces will Ximian be working on?
A: We will devote most of our resources to work on the pieces which are
on the critical path to release a development and execution
environment. Once the project is at a stage where it is useful in
the real world, it will achieve a critical mass of developers to
improve it further.
Q: Will Ximian offer Mono commercially?
A: When Mono is ready to be shipped Ximian will offer a commercial
support and services for Mono.
Q: Does Ximian provide consulting services around Mono?
A: Yes, Ximian does provide consulting services around Mono to
make it suitable to your needs. Porting the runtime engine,
customizing it, working on specific classes or tuning the code
for your particular needs.
Q: Will you wait until Mono is finished?
A: Mono will ship on various stages as they mature. Some people
require only a subset of the technologies, those will ship first.
More advanced features will take more time to develop. A support
timeline will be available in June 2002.
<a name="gnome"></a>
** Mono and GNOME
Q: How is Mono related to GNOME?
A: In a number of ways. This project was born out of the need of
providing improved tools for the GNOME community, and will use
existing components that have been developed for GNOME when they
are available. For example, we plan to use Gtk+ and Libart to
implement Winforms and the Drawing2D API and are considering
GObject support.
Q: Has the GNOME Foundation or the GNOME team adopted Mono?
A: Mono is too new to be adopted by those groups. We hope that the
tools that we will provide will be adopted by free software
programmers including the GNOME Foundation members and the GNOME
project generally.
Q: Should GNOME programmers switch over to Mono now?
A: It is still far to early for discussions of "switching over." No
pieces of Mono will be ready within the next six months, and a
complete implementation is roughly one year away.
We encourage GNOME developers to continue using the existing tools,
libraries and components. Improvements made to GNOME will have an
impact on Mono, as they would be the "backend" for various classes.
Q: Will Mono include compatibility with Bonobo components? What is the
relationship between Mono and Bonobo?
A: Yes, we will provide a set of classes for implementing and using
Bonobo components from within Mono. Mono should allow you to write
Bonobo components more easily, just like .NET on Windows allows you
to export .NET components to COM.
Q: Does Mono depend on GNOME?
A: No, Mono does not depend on GNOME. We use a few packages produced by
the GNOME team like the `glib' library.
Q: But will I be able to build GNOME applications?
A: Yes, we will enable people to write GNOME applications using Mono.
Q: Do you have C# bindings for GNOME?.
A: Yes, we currently bind libgnome, libgnomecanvas, and libgnomeui --
although I dare say I have no idea how functional the bindings are
outside of what I tested in the sample app. I imagine other libraries
under the GNOME framework will be added on an as-needed (and as-requested)
basis...although a truly good bonobo binding will have to wait on the CORBA
remoting support which has been started recently.
<a name="gui"></a>
** GUI applications
Q: Will Mono enable GUI applications to be authored?
A: Yes, you will be able to build GUI applications. Indeed, that is our
main focus. We will provide both the Windows.Forms API and the Gtk# API.
Q: What is the difference between Gtk# and System.Windows.Forms?
A: Gtk# is a set of bindings for the Gtk+ toolkit for C# (and other
CIL-enabled languages). System.Windows.Forms is an API defined
by Microsoft to build GUI applications.
Q: Will I be able to run my smart clients on systems powered by Mono?
A: As long as your applications are 100% .NET and do not make use
of P/Invoke to call Win32 functions, your smart client applications
will run on Mono platforms.
Q: Where can I learn mora about Gtk#?
A: The following <a href="http://gtk-sharp.sourceforge.net>link</a> sends you to the page of the project.
Q: What can I do with Gtk#?.
A: Gtk# is becoming very usable and you can create applications and
applets like those you see in a GNOME desktop environment. It's
easy to install so it's worth a try.
Q: How can I compile my HelloWorld.cs which uses Gtk#?.
A: Try: mcs --unsafe -o HelloWorld.exe -r glib-sharp -r pango-sharp -r
atk-sharp -r gdk-sharp -r gtk-sharp -r gdk-imaging-sharp
HelloWorld.cs
Q: Is there any way how to connect DataAdapter to some GTK# controls?
A: There is a sample file called `DbClient' in gtk-sharp/samples that you
might to look at. It is a sample program in Gtk# that adds/updates/deletes
information on a Postgress database. When we have the new table/tree widgets,
I am sure someone would write an adapter for System.Data (in Gtk2 the
tree/list widgets are written using a view/model, so you only need to write
a model that maps to the database). You can have a look at
gtk-sharp/sample/DbClient, where there is a GTK# application that uses
System.Data. It does not use DataAdapter, but DataReader though.
<a name="winforms"></a>
** Mono and WinForms
Q: Can you tell me why aren't you implementing WinForms?.
A: (This is based in an original mail to mono-list written by Miguel de
Icaza. You should read it for completion, but the core part is here).
First, Windows.Forms is packed with quirks and is not that great of a
toolkit in the first place. Up to the point of the unconfirmed rumor
that Microsoft is working on a replacement for it.
Once the runtime is done, we will very likely start contributing to
the Gtk# project ourselves, and we will likely start doing feasibility
work on getting Mono used by Gnome developers: full gnome apps and
extending existing applications.
Those interested in hacking on Windows.Forms are welcome to do so,
but Ximian will not likely look at it in the near future; if there is
enough demand, or I can be convinced that Windows.Forms is useful for
something Ximian might re-evaluate our resource allocation for this
task.
By doing native ports, we could use the same API on all those systems.
Also, Gtk is mature enough, we know this because we have built an entire
desktop (and all sorts of very window system-specific hacks), and we
have built a bunch of productivity applications with it.
Q: What about VCL?.
Someone mentioned VCL. The only problem with the VCL is that it can
only be used for GPL applications (or I guess you could license it from
Borland for your app), and would have to be ported from Delphi to C#
(or someone would have to write a CIL compiler for it).
Q: What about doing something like the eclipse project (www.eclipse.org)?
A: The Eclipse toolkit is not a general purpose toolkit. It will require a
lot of work before it is such a thing. It is a toolkit used to
implement a development environment.
<a name="msft"></a>
** Mono and Microsoft
Q: Is Microsoft helping Ximian with this project?
A: No. Ximian CTO Miguel de Icaza had a friendly conversation with
Microsoft software architect David Stutz, but that's about the
extent of the contact. Microsoft is interested in other
implementations of .NET and are willing to help make the ECMA spec
more accurate for this purpose.
Ximian representatives have also spoken with Sam Ruby at the ECMA
TG3 committee to discuss the same issues.
Q: Is Microsoft or Corel paying Ximian to do this?
A: No.
Q: Do you fear that Microsoft will change the spec and render Mono
useless?
A: No. Microsoft proved with the CLI and the C# language that it was
possible to create a powerful foundation for many languages to
interoperate. We will always have that.
Even if changes happened in the platform which were undocumented,
the existing platform would a value on its own.
Q: Are you writing Mono from the ECMA specs?
A: Yes, we are writing them from the ECMA specs and the published
materials in print about .NET.
Q: If my applications use Mono, will I have to pay a service fee?
A: No. Mono is not related to Microsoft's initiative of
software-as-a-service.
Q: Is the Mono Project is related to the Microsoft Hailstorm effort? Is
Ximian endorsing Hailstorm?
A: No. The Mono Project is focused on providing a compatible set of
tools for the Microsoft .NET development platform. It does not
address, require, or otherwise endorse the MS Passport-based
Hailstorm single sign-on system that is part of Windows XP and
other services.
Q: Will Mono or .NET applications depend on Microsoft Passport?
A: No. MS Passport is unrelated to running .NET compatible applications
produced with the Mono tools. The only thing you will need is a
just-in-time compiler (JIT).
Q: What is a 100% .NET application?
A: A `100% .NET application' is one that only uses the APIs defined
under the System namespace and does not use PInvoke. These
applications would in theory run unmodified on Windows, Linux,
HP-UX, Solaris, MacOS X and others.
Q: If Microsoft will release a port of their .NET platform under the
`Shared Source' license, why should I bother with anything else?
A: The Shared Source implementation will be expensive and its uses
will be tightly restricted, especially for commercial use. We are
working towards an implementation that will grant a number of
important rights to recipients: use for any purpose,
redistribution, modification, and redistribution of modifications.
This is what we call <a
href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html">Free Software</a>
Q: Is Mono a free implementation of Passport?
A: No. Mono is just a runtime, a compiler and a set of class
libraries.
Q: Will the System.Web.Security.PassportIdentity class mean
that my software will depend on Passport?
A: No. Applications may use that API to contact a Passport site, but
are not required to do so.
As long as your application does not use Passport, you will not
need Passport.
Q: Will Mono running on Linux make Passport available for Linux?
A: No. However, the Passport toolkit for Linux-based web servers is
available from Microsoft.
Q: Will Mono allow me to run Microsoft Office on Linux?
A: No, it will not. Microsoft Office is a Windows application. To
learn more about running Windows applications on Intel Unix systems
refer to <a href="http://www.winehq.com">the Wine Project</a>.
Q: Will I be able to compile a Microsoft VB.NET application and execute
the resultant MSIL file under MONO on Linux without converting to C#
and recompiling?
A: Once we have a complete VisualBasic runtime, yes.
Q: Can mono run the WebMatrix ?
A: No. That requires winforms (we don't have).
Q: Does mono have something like Passport ? (ie PassportIdentity class,somewhere
in System.Web ?) . Will mono have a server side Passport/Similar framework
for XSP as well as client classes ?
A: Not yet, but the client side API for authentication is not the problem.
We will likely have a lot of other authentication APIs, like the Liberty
Aliance APIs. The problem is people on the web provider end that might use
this for authentication.
<a name="pnpproject"></a>
** Mono and Portable.NET
Q: What are the differences between Mono and Portable.NET?
A: Most of Mono is being written using C#, with only
a few parts written in C (The JIT engine, the runtime, the
interfaces to the garbage collection system).
It is easier to describe what is unique about Mono:
<ul>
<li> A self-hosting C# compiler written in C#, which is clean, easy
to maintain.
<li> A multi-platform runtime engine: both a JIT engine and an
interpreter exist. The JIT engine runs currently on x86
systems, while the interpreter works on Sparc, StrongARM and
PowerPC systems.
<li> Supports Linux, Windows and Solaris at this point.
<li> The JIT engine is written using a portable instruction
selector which not only generates good code (we are told
that we are faster than Rotor, but it is hard to tell) but
is also the foundation to retarget the JIT engine to other
systems.
The system employed is described in various compiler
books and it is very similar to what is described in the
book that covers LCC, the Ansi C retargetable C compiler.
<li> The JIT engine supports inlining, constant folding and propagation,
<li> Full support for remoting in the runtime, but the class
libraries are still behind.
<li> The C# compiler, the JIT engine and the class libraries are
mature enough that the whole system is self-hosting, ie, that
it can be fully developed with itself at this point.
<li> We are not yet done, and there is a lot of work left to be
done
<li> We have a great community of developers, without which Mono
would not be possible.
<li> We will provide an ahead of time compilation mode in the
future.
</ul>
<a name="webservices"></a>
** Web Services
Q: How is Mono related to Web Services?
A: Mono is only related to Web Services in that it will implement the
same set of classes that have been authored in the .NET Framework
to simplify and streamline the process of building Web Services.
But most importantly, Mono is an Open Source implementation of the
.NET Framework.
Q: Can I author Web Services with Mono?
A: You will be able to write Web Services on .NET that run on Mono and
viceversa.
Q: If Mono implements the SDK classes, will I be able to write and
execute .NET Web Services with it?
A: Yes. When the project is finished, you will be able to use the
same technologies that are available through the .NET Framework SDK
on Windows to write Web Services.
Q: What about Soup? Can I use Soup without Mono?
A: Soup is a library for GNOME applications to create SOAP servers and
SOAP clients, and can be used without Mono. You can browse the
source code for soup using <a
href="http://cvs.gnome.org/bonsai">GNOME's Bonsai</a>.
Q: Can I use CORBA?
A: Yes. The CLI contains enough information about a class that
exposing it to other RPC systems (like CORBA) is really simple, and
does not even require support from an object.
We will be implementing CORBA interoperation as an extension to the
Mono classes so that we can integrate with Bonobo, just like
Microsoft provides COM interoperation classes and support
mechanisms.
Q: Can I serialize my objects to other things other than XML?
A: Yes, although the serializing tools have not yet been planned, and
you would probably have to implement them yourself.
Q: Will Mono use ORBit?
A: No. Mono will be using a new implementation of CORBA that isn't still started.
<a name="devel"></a>
** Development Tools and Issues
Q: Will it be possible to use the CLI features without using bytecodes
or the JIT?
A: Yes. The CLI engine will be made available as a shared library.
The garbage collection engine, the threading abstraction, the
object system, the dynamic type code system and the JIT will be
available for C developers to integreate with their applications if
they wish to do so.
Q: Will you have new development tools?
A: With any luck, Free Software enthusiasts will contribute tools to
improve the developer environment. These tools could be developed
initially using the Microsoft implementation of the CLI and then
executed later with Mono.
Q: What kind of rules make the Common Intermediate Language useful for
JITers?
A: The main rule is that the stack in the CLI is not a general purpose
stack. You are not allowed to use it for other purposes than
computing values and passing arguments to functions or return
values.
At any given call or return instruction, the types on the stack
have to be the same independently of the flow of execution of your
code.
Q: Is it true that the CIL is ideal for JITing and not efficient for
interpreters?
A: The CIL is better suited to be JITed than JVM byte codes, but you
can interpret them as trivially as you can interpret JVM byte
codes.
Q: Isn't it a little bit confusing to have the name of "XSP" (the same
as in the Apache Project) for the ASP.NET support in Mono?.
A: In Mono, xsp is just the name of the C# code generator for ASP.NET
pages. In the Apache Project, it is a term for the "eXtensible Server
Pages" technology so as they are very different things, they don't
conflict.
Q: What about using something like Jabber instead of the System.Messaging
namespace?.
A: In short, MSMQ is not something like Jabber, but asynchronous messaging
through queues. Usefull queues do more than serialize messages, they are
also platform bridges.
Q: Are you supporting XMLDocument and relatives?.
A: Currently, we aren't implementing them yet. It would require updates to
most of the XmlNode derivatives so it's not a trivial task. We are
currently focusing on getting XPath support working.
Q: Is there any plan to develop an aspx server for Mono?.
A: The webserver turned out to be very simple compared to the rest of the
work. Gonzalo has got the page generator mostly done (a module called
xsp, who has nothing to do with the XSP term used in the Apache Project).
Patrik has done a lot of the work to get the ProcessRequest to work.
You can try to help in the final touches to the System.Web classes and
writing regression tests for the widgets we have.
Q: Is there any way I can develop the class libraries using linux yet?
A: Yes. Some class libraries can be developed on Linux. Search for
Paolo's post (he lists which classes can be compiled fine now).
Q: Is there any way I can install a known working copy of mono in /usr,
and an experimental copy somewhere else, and have both copies use
their own libraries? (I'm still not very good at library paths in
linux)
A: Yes. Just use two installation prefixes.
Q: How should I write tests or a tests suite?
A: If you do a test suite for C#, you might want to keep it
independent of the Mono C# compiler, so that other compiler
implementations can later use it.
Q: Is the current stage the implementation of mono_create_trampoline
function? Hence the sparc-codegen.h is reasonably complete? Is
mono/arch/x86/* the best reference material for this stuff?
A: sparc-codegen.h is basically complete. We may want to add some
convenience macros along the way, but it has all the stuff you need.
And yes, or, the ppc/ dir, since the ppc call convention is more similar
to the sparc one than the x86 one. The current issues with the sparc
code are. roughly:
1) it needs to handle overflowing the out registers (the additional
arguments need to be put on the stack)
2) it needs to flush the icache where the generated code is stored
3) it needs to implement mono_create_method_pointer to get delegates
working
4) it needs a couple of updates (mono_method_pointer_get is no longer
needed, for example)
Q: Would it be too terrible to have another corlib signed as mscorlib?
A: We rename corlib to mscorlib also when saving the PE files, in fact,
the runtime can execute program created by mono just fine.
Q: How do I build corlib under Linux?
A: You can build your own (see the web site on how to get the mcs
project from cvs), but in order to build them using mcs you need a
set of working class libraries. After building the runtime (using
mono-build.sh) get them from the nightly build and put them (and
mcs.exe) in your mono/install/lib directory. Then you should be able
to do: cd mcs, then: make -f makefile.gnu, then: cp mcs/mcs.exe
class/lib/*.dll ../install/lib Also, you should know that you can
either get your dose of DLLs from MonoCharge, or from
http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/runtime. MonoCharge is updated
automatically, while the later is only updated when Miguel is around
Once you have the DLLs, you can use `make -f makefile.gnu' as described
before to self-host.
Q: Is there a relatively straightforward way to repeat the steps taken
by Paolo to get Mono completely self-hosted on linux?
A: To build the compiler and class libraries in Linux, run:
<ul><li>make -f makefile.gnu. To install them, run: </li>
<li>make -f makefile.gnu install</li>
<li>You can also specify a prefix:</li>
<li>make -f makefile.gnu install prefix=/opt</li>
</ul>
If you want to produce and distribute a monocharge tarball, run:
make -f makefile.gnu dist
Of course you have to run these in the top level mcs directory.
Q: Is it possible to build a C# file to some sort of intermediate format which
can linked into a final module, like the traditional .c -> .o -> .so path?
A: You could do: mcs /target:module file1.cs, mcs /target:module file2.cs,
mcs /target:exe file1.dll file2.dll /out:mybin.exe
Q: Is there any plans for implementing remoting in the near future?, When will
work in System.Runtime.Remoting.dll start?
A: The remoting infrastructure is in place. Some of the channels and
formatters are not.
Q: I'm wondering if there are any plans to start using nant to build the
class lib + test lib. i think that every project neeed/should use an
automated build process and nant + a couple of tools enables this. is
the problem that the compiler can't run nant yet?
A: Maybe well be doing some sort of automated build process + testing when
the summer finish.
<a name="asp">
** Mono and ASP.NET
Q: Is Mono supporting ASP.NET?
A: Yes. The development of the support for ASP.NET comes in various stages,
here is what Gonzalo has been working on: 1. The Parser. 2. Getting the
parser to generate output compatible with ASP.NET. 3. Running the sample
output with the real Microsoft runtime but using our generated page. 4.
Running the sample with our classes with the .NET runtime. 5. Running
our sample code with our classes with our runtime. This is the process
we are following. Currently Gonzalo has reached point 5.
Q: Do I need install cygwin to work on ASP.NET in mono or Linux is enough since
it is self host right now.
A: Linux is enough.
Q: Any plan to make ASP.NET in mono works with Apache in linux?.
A: Yes, we have plans to do so, but we need to wait for Patrik's patches to
HttpRuntime. Once that is there, writing a mod_mono should be trivial
(look at mono/samples/embed for a sample embedded application).
<a name="ado">
** Mono and ADO.NET
Q: What is the status of ADO.NET support?. Could I start migrating
applications from MS.NET to Mono?.
A: You could start right now using the ADO.NET support in mono, of course,
if you want to help filling the missing gaps while you develop your app
:-) Well, what I mean is that we're not that far to having full ADO.NET
support in Mono, and we've got a lot of working things, so if we could
get more help, we'd finish it really soon :-)
Q: In developing the data architecture for the application are there and
objects I should stay away from in order to insure the smoothest possible
transition (minimum code rewrite) to Mono's ADO.NET implementation? (For
example, strongly typed datasets versus untyped datasets, etc...)
A: we are implementing all the classes in Microsoft .NET's System.Data, so
you can be sure that things will work the same in Mono as with the MS's
implementation. We'll maybe provide extra classes to fix some things
we've found missing while developing ADO.NET in Mono, but if you keep
using the MS's System.Data classes, things will work out of the box with
no changes (or at least that's the plan :-)
<a name="java">
** Mono and Java
Q: Why don't you use Java? After all, there are many languages that
target the Java VM.
A: You can get very good tools for doing Java development on free
systems right now. <a href="http://www.redhat.com">Red Hat</a> has
contributed a <a href="http://gcc.gnu.org">GCC</a> <a
href="http://gcc.gnu.org/java">frontend for Java</a> that can take
Java sources or Java byte codes and generate native executables; <a
href="http://www.transvirtual.com">Transvirtual</a> has implemented
<a href="http://www.kaffe.org">Kaffe</a> a JIT engine for Java;
Intel also has a Java VM called <a
href="http://www.intel.com/research/mrl/orp">ORP</a>.
The JVM is not designed to be a general purpose virtual machine.
The Common Intermediate Language (CIL), on the other hand, is
designed to be a target for a
wide variety of programming languages, and has a set of rules
designed to be optimal for JITers.
Q: Could Java target the CLI?
A: Yes, Java could target the CLI. We have details on a <a
href="ideas.html#guavac">project</a> that someone could take on to
make this happen.
Microsoft has an implemenation of the Java language called J# that
can target the CIL execution engine.
Q: Is it possible to write a JVM byte code to CIL convertor?
A: Yes, it is possible. Here are a few starting point:
<ul>
* A byte code representation is really a flattened forest of
trees. Look at the Mono JIT engine to see how we compute
the basic blocks (this is used to figure out the "trees").
The forest is just an array of trees.
Indeed, run the JIT engine with -d (mono -d prog.exe) and
you will see how these trees look like.
You will have to do something similar for Java.
* Each "forest of trees" has a meaning. This meaning can now
be translated into the equivalent "meaning" in CLR-land.
</ul>
Q: Could mono become a hybrid cil/java platform?
A: No. It is quite far from the philosophy of the project. The idea of Mono
is, to have only _one_ VM, on which all can run. And if there existing a
binary-converter from Java-.class to IL and if there existing something
like J-Sharp on Mono, you can write programs in Java, which than can run
on Mono. You do not need two bindings (like your example: GTK-Sharp _and_
Java-Gnome). You need only _one_ of it (GTK-Sharp). Thats the idea of Mono.
An other point is, that there are no people, who use OpenSource-JVMs. They
all prefer Suns original. But for Unix there don't exist a .NET-Framework.
So it is possible, that in the future Mono is the standard .NET for unixes.
Q: Do you plan to implement a Javascript compiler?
A: Yes. Eto Demerzal has started a Rhino port to C#.
After this is completed, we will begin developing
the Javascript compiler.
<a name="extending"></a>
** Extending Mono
Q: Would you allow other classes other than those in the
specification?
A: Yes. The Microsoft class collection is very big, but it is by no
means complete. It would be nice to have a port of `Camel' (the
Mail API used by Evolution inspired by Java Mail) for Mono
applications.
You might also want to look into implementing CORBA for Mono. Not
only because it would be useful, but because it sounds like a fun
thing to do, given the fact that the CLI is such a type rich
system.
For more information on extending Mono, see our <a
href="ideas.html">ideas</a> page.
Q: Do you plan to Embrace and Extend .NET?
A: Embracing a good technology is good. Extending technologies in
incompatible ways is bad for the users, so we do not plan on
extending the technologies.
If you have innovative ideas, and want to create new classes, we
encourage you to make those classes operate correctly well in both
Mono and .NET.
Q: Is there any way I can develop the class libraries using linux yet?
A: Yes. Some class libraries can be developed on Linux. Search for
Paolo's post (he lists which classes can be compiled fine now).
Q: Is there any way I can install a known working copy of mono in /usr,
and an experimental copy somewhere else, and have both copies use
their own libraries? (I'm still not very good at library paths in
linux)
A: Yes. Just use two installation prefixes.
<a name="portability"></a>
** Portability
Q: Will Mono only work on Linux?
A: Currently, we are doing our work on Linux-based systems and
Windows. We do not expect many Linux-isms in the code, so it
should be easy to port Mono to other UNIX variants.
Q: What about Mono on non Linux-based systems?
A: Our main intention at Ximian is to be able to develop GNOME
applications with Mono, but if you are interested in providing a
port of the Winform classes to other platforms (frame buffer or
MacOS X for example), we would gladly integrate them, as long
they are under an open source license.
Q: What operating systems/CPUs do you support
A: Mono currently runs on Linux, Windows, Solaris and FreeBSD.
There is a JIT engine available for x86 processors that can
generate code and optimizations tailored for a particular CPU.
Interpreters exist for the SPARC, PowerPC and StrongARM cpus.
Q: Does Mono run on Windows?
A: Yes. The Compiler and the runtime both run on Windows.
Q: When will mono and mcs compile on Linux?.
A: That happend a long time ago. Know you can download and compile
them or even install them from already made binary packages for
Windows and for Linux (RPM/DEB).
Q: Will I require Cygwin to run mono?
A: No. While you'll need it to compile it, it runs without cygwin and does not even require cygwin1.dll
Q: Will Mono depend on GNOME?
A: It will depend only if you are using a particular assembly (for
example, for doing GUI applications). If you are just interested
in Mono for implementing a `Hello World Enterprise P2P Web
Service', you will not need any GNOME components.
Q: Is anyone working on porting Mono to IA-64?
A: Nobody is working on such port.
Q: If I were about to start a Mono port to IA-64,would the same lburg code
generator work for IA-64 also? or anything else need to be used for code
generation(as the processor architecture is totally different from IA32)
A: The lburg approach can be use for any processor architecture. But you might
think in another better approach.
Q: Do you plan to port Rhino to C#?.
A: Eto Demerzal has started a Rhino port to C#.
Q: Has anyone succeeded in building a Mac version of the C# environment.
If so can you explain how?
A: You could try to check with the Darwin people, or the Fink people.
Mono/C# is self hosting on Linux/PPC which is the hard part, so it
should be relatively simple to get it to work on macos
<a name="reuse"></a>
** Reusing Existing Code
Q: What projects will you reuse or build upon?
A: We want to get Mono in the hands of programmers soon. We are
interested in reusing existing open source software.
Q: What about Intel's research JIT framework, ORP?
A: At this time, we are investigating whether we can use elements of
ORP for Mono. ORP is a research JIT engine that has a clearly
defined API that splits the JIT from the GC system and the actual
byte code implementation.
We are using some pieces of ORP (Their code generation interface)
and we use it as a source of inspiration for optimizations. Paolo
and Dietmar consider ORP as being one of the best JIT engines out
there (and their research work and papers are very useful if you are
interested in JIT technology).
Q: What about using GNU Lightning?
A: We are not using GNU Lightning. Our JIT is using an instruction
selector based on tree-pattern matching, and a code generation
interface that is very tied to the current architecture.
Q: Will I be able to use Microsoft SQL Server 2000 or will I need to switch
to a specific Open Source Database. Will I need to recode?
A: There should not be any need to recode.
Q: What do I need to watch out for when programming in VB.NET so that I'm
sure to be able to run those apps on Linux?
A: Not making any PInvoke or DLL calls should and not using anything in
the Microsoft.* namespaces should suffice. Also do not use any
Methods/Classes marked as "This type/method supports the .NET Framework
infrastructure and is not intended to be used directly from your code."
even if you know what these classes/methods do.
Q: Will built-in reporting be supported for crystal reports? This is a
heavily used part of our system.
A: Probably not. Crystal Reports are propriety. Someone may try to emulate
the behaviour, but no-one has yet volunteered.
Q: Who about writing to the registry? As I understand it, Linux does not have
a counterpart to the registry. Should I avoid relying on that feature?
A: Try to avoid it. Although there would be a emulation for registry in
Mono too. GNOME does have a registry like mechanism for configuration. But
Even if gnome has a configuration system similar to the registry, the keys
will not be equal, so you will probably end up having to do some runtime
detection, and depending on this load an assembly that has your
platform-specific hacks.