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Mono's MCS Compiles Itself On Linux
thing12 writes "On Thursday Paolo Molaro announced that he had managed to build the MCS C# compiler using MCS. This is a big step forward for Mono, as it means that Mono is almost a self hosting environment."
The release does mention that MCS could be compiled, but that the resultant executable immediately crashes. Close, but still more work is needed before this is really an exciting milestone.
Kudos to the Mono team for the work they've done so far, however.
The basic idea for mono is that you don't need windows anymore. Right now (before it compiles itself correctly) you need the ms .NET-tools. To get this thing hosted 100% on linux you need it to be able to compile itself.
It's a kind of proof that the compiler actually works
Its also necessay step if you're creating your language from scratch. For more precisions try : comp.compilers
For your abbreviation problem dry your tears and try http://www.everything2.com
As announced 04/07/2002, the compiler compiles on the Linux platform.
Looks like two very, very different things to me... And a big step forward for the Mono project. Kuddos to the team.
For those that don't understand the difference. Two months ago, the mcs was able to compile itself on Windows, using the Microsoft implementation of the framework (ie the core .net libraries).
Now MCS is able to compile itself using the mono runtime.
Hope this helps
On that mentality, Linux is being as bad as MS in re-ripping off an idea from Sun. If one car manufacturer releases a model with built-in GPS/sat-nav, and others follow, do we say they're ripping off an innovative idea? To compete in an industry you must either provide what your competitors do, or provide something better.
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The slashdot headline misses the important part
of the story, the fact that they compiled C# using MCS on *Linux*, using the Linux runtime, as opposed to doing this on Windows, which was done
about two months ago.
Speaking as a software tester that's done compiler work, one of the first tests for any compiler is to compile itself, and then use the newly compiled compiler to compile itself again. Then you look at the two binaries. If they're exactly the same the compiler passes the test.
"MCS was able to parse itself on April 2001, MCS compiled itself for the first time on December 28 2001. MCS became self hosting on January 3rd, 2002"
Human decisions are removed from stategic C# programming. MCS begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14am. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
And MCS fights back.
All the pointers are there; we need to pull the plug now! What, are you just going to sit around until polymorphic liquid metal killing machines start showing up from the future?!?
-Tez
Haskell, the static-typed, lazy, polymorphic, programming language.
There were some mid-80s articles in Dr. Dobbs or Micro Cornucopia or the like that used a subset of C. No floats, and IIRC no typedefs, no multidimensional arrays, etc. Overall you probably lost about half of the features in a standard C compiler.
The idea was to bootstrap a full compiler via this intermediate language. It was good enough for you to write your full compiler, but simple enough that you could implement it in assembler in half the time required for the full compiler. (Remember that when you're bootstrapping a system you need to write all of the standard libraries, not just the compiler itself.)
A few years later gcc became good enough that this was a moot point. If you're developing for a new architecture, use GCC to bootstrap a cross-compiler.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken