Portable.NET Now 100% Free Software

rhysweatherley writes "Finally after months of hard work and bucket loads of caffeine, the DotGNU community has finally got Portable.NET to the point of building our C# libraries on many Free Software platforms with our own C# compiler. This is a big deal! Portable.NET is now 100% pure Free Software, with no dependencies on third party C# tools. The compiler, which is written in C, bootstraps off gcc, so there are no icky 'how to compile the compiler' problems. And it's fast! The DotGNU team consists of lots of contributors, many of whom are coincidentially named 'Rhys Weatherley,' but this wouldn't have been possible without the support of the DotGNU community, especially the Weekend Warriors. .NET is not the only thing we are doing. We're playing around with JVM and Parrot (of perl6 fame) backends to the compiler. And we have a C compiler front-end that generates pure bytecode apps that can run on any decent CIL implementation (Portable.NET, Mono, etc). We are about 95% of the way towards our first milestone of an ECMA-compatible C# implementation. There are lots of things still to be done in the low-level C# libraries, runtime engine, and the compiler. So, if you have some time on your hands, and like messing with languages and stuff, like yours truly ... have look and maybe have some fun!"

Comments

Re:Cool

[0x0d0a]

I doubt that will happen. They'll add something and make the open-source engine work mostly, but as a less-reliable system with fewer features.

And they aren't going to get MS sorts using it (even ignoring the pre-installed issue that beat even Netscape's best efforts), because MS put lots of money, time, and talent into their own VM, and the GNU one just ain't gonna be significantly better any time soon.

The .NET move was a pretty good move for MS.

Re:Never thought this day would come

[J. J. Ramsey]

"I'm not sure why so many man months were spent trying to hook into .NET. Couldn't we have spent more time refining the applications, utilities, and system code that we already have rather than wasting time extending the Microsoft monopoly?"

Alternative C# compilers have the potential to undermine rather than extend the MS monopoly, simply because they are an alternative source for a C# platform.

The real trick would be getting C# programmers in the habit of targeting just the ECMA standard rather than the standard + MS lock-in extensions.

As a new c# programmer...

[bnavarro]

...(and old-time programmer):

This is an interesing development. However: I wonder how useful this language is on non-windows platforms. Let me explain.

You see, I have just started a new job that is heavily leveraging the .NET framework to bring an enterprise-level solution to fruition as quickly as possible. I evaluated c#, and decided that the greatest advantage c# brings to the table is rapid development through dynamic ActiveX/COM objects. That is: even though this is a compiled language, you code in it as though it was an interpreted language with ActiveX hooks. You would load any ActiveX object with a statement like

X = new Object(params);

and then you can immediately reference it with statements like

Z = X.func(param);

If you haven't written JScript, VBScript, or WSHScript, you have no idea just how amazingly powerful this is. A database connection & query takes around 4 lines of code. I was able to master in-code LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, aka Active Directory on Windoze boxes) queries in less than one day, having never touched an LDAP server in my life prior to that.

Sadly, *NIX has never really implimented anything like COM. Each programming language still has to be manually extended in some form or another to recognise new APIs -- headers for compiled languages (and remembering to link to the libraries), or worse, "extension agent" coding for dynamic languages like Perl and Python (assuming the API code is a binary shared library). And APIs are almost never identical accross multiple languages.

So, really: what is the need for C# on *NIX? None of my c# code that I am writing will port, because it is heavily dependent on the COM/ActiveX objects to get the real work done. Unless the .GNU project aims to bring ActiveX functionality over to *NIX, and port all of the cool ActiveX objects like ADO (Database), DOM (XML), System.DirectoryServices (LDAP), FSO (Files), etc.

Is thes even feasible to do?

Re:Never thought this day would come

[psxndc]

Actually most games are written in C++.

One thing you didn't mention though is Web Applications which, though you may argue are no big deal, I would argue at least a 10-15% of the development going on centers around. A super set of that is B2B applications which probably account for 25-33% of the development going on. C # and Java are way better suited for web development and B2B development and have established frameworks to springboard from.

I understand about your frustrations with the fickleness of the /. crowd, but the excitement here is the choice to _not_ extend the monopoly. By creating a C# compiler, libraries, etc Portable.NET and Mono are allowing developers to not use Microsoft tools or Microsoft OS's to generate useful code. Yes MS created C#, but you don't have to use anything MS owned or controlled to use it. If it doesn't exist already, I wouldn't be surprised if there is an apache mod_aspx/C# in the works. People assume that because MS created it, it has to be bad and unusable by the OSS crowd. It's really not the case...

now to quote a reply I've seen to a comment like yours before:

Why do I need C, I can use assembly.
Why do I need assembly, I can just type in 1's and 0's.
etc :-)

psxndc

Re:objective analysis

[Ed Avis]

Sure, C# is a good language compared to C and all that. But then that's true of a whole bunch of languages out there. You could easily enthuse just as much about OCaml or Scheme or Ruby or Smalltalk. It doesn't seem that C# is the best language out there, just that it is 'better than C most of the time' (which isn't difficult, now that CPUs are so fast) and 'what other people seem to be using', in other words herd mentality. Which is fine - and the reason why I use Perl - but it's a mistake to think that technical merit and expressivity are something magically invented with C#, any more than the graphical user interface suddenly came along when Windows was released. Although some journalists do seem to have that idea.

Re:.NET for Linux

[Zeinfeld]

Microsoft hasn't been all that good at innovating. [vcnet.com]

And Linux would be what? a trully innovative implementation of a 30 year old operating system using the same coding techniques.

The whole industry is the same. Lotus didn't invent the spreadsheet, Oracle didn't invent SQL, Apple didn't invent the windows and mouse GUI, Linus didn't invent UNIX. Most of the ideas in UNIX are taken from Multics.

Bill and his buffoons must be laughing hard....

[zruty]

This place is really getting full of M$ trolls.

Dont you all see the pattern here? Oh geez, let's all begin developping using this so neat C$ language and let's contribute to this so great .NET$ "innovation". Bill and his buffoons must be smoking a big fat one with a smile now.... And we are even lighting it for them...

The trap is set, and we are happily jumping on the trigger using both feet. Of course, Bill will help us out by releasing his .NET vital infrastructure source code real soon now, since we are so nice in contributing to the hype and fud ourselves. And of course, there is no way in hell Bill will pollute his own spec just for our own good and for the sake of his own pocket... Noooooo, of course not!

During this time, Java continues to die slowly, getting fewer and fewer developpers. Don't you realize that we are contributing in digging our own grave?

Java might be not so great, but it is still the only true alternative to this M$ obscenity.

Please people, read the J2EE spec, the Java language spec., and go play with JBoss for a while... Then, come back, and take another look at this .NET$ aberration and you will be the one laughing, not Bill and his monkeys.

Wake up people!

Zruty

Re:Never thought this day would come

[Temporal]

I have a very hard time coding in C. It's not that I don't know the language. I can write anything in C, and write it well. But it takes so much work! Writing C code which is clean, modular, reusable, robust, and maintainable is a pain, if not a flat out contradiction in terms. If forced to use C, I would basically end up emulating all of the features of C++ using macros and redundant code.

As a matter of fact, one of my favorite programming techniques is impossible in C. I like to use reference counted smart pointers to handle memory management automatically. However, in C, there is no way to automate that -- you would have to manually call some sort of functions which increment and decrement the reference count, which defeats most of the purpose.

If I were writing an operating system, I would probably choose C. But a desktop environment? A game? I've worked on my own game engine (see my homepage), and the thought of trying to do it all in C makes me cringe. You might not agree, but I think you just don't know what you are missing.

I am actually now designing my own programming language. In my language, I have been able to write an IRC-like client/server chat program in 161 lines of code, and it would perform better than any but the most thoughfully designed C programs. Sure, you could write it in C, but why? Why spend days writing and debugging something that would take hours in another language?

Woohoo, I'm all psyched up to work on my compiler now. Time for a coding binge! Thanks! :)

The Microsoft Upgrade Treadmill

[mrsam]

First of all, cOM is on it's way out. It is being replaced by the new remoting and web services architecture.

I've yet to see anyone address this point, which must be made. I'm not sure what that "remoting and web service architecture" is. I don't know. But I damn know one thing: in three or four years Microsoft will obsolete that technology, and it will be replaced with something else.

Microsoft receives significant revenue from training armies of MCSE, using endless arrays of certifications and development programs. And, as such, they have a vested interest in keeping the revenue alive with what I call a "steady technology churn." They can't just pick an API, and go with it for the long term future. They need to force all the MCSEs back into the training camps, in order to make sure that their paper certifications do not expire.

I dabbled with some Windows programming, many years ago. You wanna know one thing? Nothing that I've learned back then is worth today any more than a hair on my ass. VBX controls, DAOs, all of that has long been made obsolete. I've done _nix programming for quite sometime before trying the Windows waters, but I quickly figured out what was going on: that the primary occupation of a Windows developer is to provide revenue to Microsoft, in terms of continuing MSDN subscriptions, fees for an endless stream of documentation for Application Interface Of The Year.

"Developers, developers, developers", indeed...

So I quickly ended that short term experiment, and went back to hacking _nix. The thing about _nix -- which is 180 degrees opposite of Windows programming -- is that the skills and the knowledge that you've learned ten or fifteen years ago is still used, and is as valid today as it was back then. If you go and learn today's crop of Windows APIs, in just a couple of years all the time you've spent today would be a complete and a total waste of time, because nothing that you've learned now is relevant any more, it's been obsoleted.

On the other hand, things like file descriptors, pipes, sockets, and other basic POSIX APIs will still be just as useful ten years from now as they are today, and as they were ten years ago. That is not to say that you won't learn anything new in the mean time. On the contrary, I have learned many great _nix technologies over the years, and I'm sure that I'll keep learning more exciting stuff in the years to come.

The key difference is that everything that I will learn will only complement, enrich, and add to my existing, growing base of knowledge. Unlike with Windows, where its only purpose would be to replace stuff that's been obsoleted by Microsoft. As a Windows programmer, I'm in for a lifetime's worth of a struggle to keep churning through one API after another, one Microsoft language, or library, or interface API after another, all while being milked by Microsoft for the training and development fees in the mean time. As a _nix programmer, I'm in for a lifetime of enrichment and expansion of my technical skills and knowledge.