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Running .NET on FreeBSD?

Posted by michael on from the fish-riding-a-bicycle dept.

Dan writes "Interesting read on running .NET on FreeBSD. Chip Morton thinks this could be very beneficial to FreeBSD or any OS to have a fully functional .NET CLR (Common Language Runtime) environment. With over 9,000 files, and including some 1300 public classes to pore through, the Shared Source CLI (Common Language Infrastructure) can teach you quite a bit about the internal workings of the CLR. This relevant MSDN article discusses some of the things you can learn from the source code facsimile of the CLR, like how JIT compilation works. One thing that the CLI specification does not mandate is that managed code has to run on Windows. To prove this point, Microsoft built the Shared Source CLI to compile and run on FreeBSD Unix as well as Windows XP."

8 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. Old News by Mark+Pitman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And this is news because???? The article on MSDN was posted in July of 2002! Is there something new about Rotor on BSD that I am missing?

    1. Re:Old News by glenstar · · Score: 2, Informative

      Unfortunately...no. And to add insult to injury, I found it impossible to actually build Rotor on FreeBSD (most likely something with my system configuration). However, Mono compiles flawlessly, so if you want to go that route it works very well.

  2. Re:There has got to be a catch.. by REBloomfield · · Score: 2, Interesting
    no catch! this is actually the point of the .NET framework, right once, run anywhere, what Java tried, and never quite achieved :(

    The only 'catch' is that there needs to be a native virtual machine, which most platforms (apart from MS) don't have yet, but check out the Mono project for a Linux implementation.

  3. There's already a Unix like JVM out there by DrSkwid · · Score: 2, Informative

    Lucent made a product called Inferno

    http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno

    it virtualizes the whole of the OS, not just a few APIs

    it had a graphics context as well

    it hijacks the hosted environment, running in a window or runs natively on hardware either way they are the same.

    Socket programming, pah who needs it, all we need are file descriptors and auto-selecting files

    it's all there

    the source code is only available for a fee

    it's really what Java & .NET should be but they aren't and it is

    --
    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
  4. The real reason for this, of course... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is because Microsoft needs FreeBSD to run Hotmail's backend.

  5. Re:There has got to be a catch.. by rplacd · · Score: 2, Informative

    Mono works on FreeBSD-i386. I've been using it off and on for several months.

    The only real "catch" is the Windows.Forms libraries (this affects mono on Linux as well). You basically need Wine or something for them. Otherwise, for GUI stuff, you can use gtk#.

  6. Re:There has got to be a catch.. by Arandir · · Score: 2, Informative

    what Java tried, and never quite achieved

    And of course, .NET hasn't achieved it either. Same overblown hype different framework.

    --
    A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
  7. get yer hands out of my server closet by ubiquitin · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Call me skeptical, but did occur to anyone else that Microsoft picked FreeBSD because
    1) they despise the GPL for what it represents and
    2) Mono is being developed on Linux?

    Don't get me wrong, I run several FreeBSD servers and prefer the ports system over RPM. It just unnerves me when the Microsoft marketing machine starts mucking around on my chosen platform.

    As a postscript, you all should be aware that PHP may well become the best platform for deploying .NET. Here's why and here's why this is irrelevant.

    --
    http://tinyurl.com/4ny52