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Mono Project Releases Beta 1

Posted by timothy on from the solo dept.

AArnott writes "Ximian has just released beta 1 of its open-source implementation of Microsoft .NET platform. Mono allows .NET applications to run on Linux, Mac OS X, Unix, Windows. Mono 1.0 is slated for release on June 30, 2004." sjanes71 adds "The first 'beta' always gets heaps of attention, and this is the first of three planned for the Mono project. Some of the new features touted for this release that updates Mono v0.31 include a faster interpreter, a global assembly cache, support for the StrongARM and HPPA platforms, generics support in the VM and C# compiler and an early alpha of System.Windows.Forms. C# and .NET is Microsoft's answer to Sun Microsystem's Java platform and Project Mono aims to create the Open Source, cross-platform version of Microsoft's new development environment."

5 of 414 comments (clear)

  1. MonoDevelop by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 5, Informative

    You might also want to check out MonoDevelop v0.3 which was released to take advantage of new features in Mono Beta1.
    While it's not quite up to the task of stable work yet, it will become a great IDE for .NET development in Linux and rival VS.NET in Windows.

  2. Re:This is exciting, at least for me. by moxruby · · Score: 5, Informative

    Microsoft open? Hah!
    Where is .NET for mac or linux? (I mean the ms created version and not mono)

    Their XML is a joke, swaths of proprietry code and an arsenal of patents to defend it.

    Microsoft pays lipservice to "open standards" to keep the DOJ at bay, but after that it's business as usual.

    Great work on Mono guys, we can only hope that microsoft won't dare use their patents against the project.

  3. Re:This is exciting, at least for me. by moxruby · · Score: 5, Informative

    Haha, far from it.
    Choice quotes from the MS website:

    It will be of interest to academics and researchers wishing to teach and explore modern programming language concepts, and to .NET developers interested in how the technology works.

    Notice that nowhere in the list of intended uses is "Development", that's because it lacks all the libraries needed to make it useful.
    This software was last updated 18 months ago - it's not undergoing development.

    Simply another ploy to gull people into thinking .NET is something more than a new API for windows...

  4. Re:I have said it once by AArnott · · Score: 5, Informative

    Chill. If Mono only implemented the CLI and a C# compiler, it WOULD be "just an open source implementation of the CLR/C#". But Mono implements nearly all of the MS.NET base class libraries as well. Those libraries are not part of the CLI. Therefore, the only accurate way to describe Mono is to say it implements .NET in Linux. Shut up.

  5. Both by DreadSpoon · · Score: 5, Informative

    They are shipping both CLS and Microsoft compatible implementations. The basic idea is that new applications for Linux can use CLS plus the Mono stack (i.e., UNIX/Linux intended assemblies, like gtk-sharp, various DB libraries, POSIX wrappers, etc) and legacy or cross-platform apps can use the Microsoft stack (Windows.*, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, etc).

    For example, a GNOME app written in C# for Mono would not use the Microsoft stack at all. So even if Microsoft broke/changed/patented the Microsoft (non-ECMA) stack, that would have zero effect on the tons of Open Source/Free Software apps developed using the ECMA and Mono assemblies. Thus, Mono provides both a great set of languages (C# and anything else that can run on the CLR), a good solid runtime (Mono+CLR stacks), an efficient and cross platform interpreter and JIT/AOT compilers, and so on.

    The only thing Microsoft can kill is Microsoft compatibility. Which really isn't all that interesting to most FOSS developers. ;-)