Mono Beta 2 Released

A little birdy writes "Less than a month after Beta 1 was released, Mono Beta 2 has been released. See the Release Notes, or go directly to the download page. It includes a C# compiler, an implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure and two stacks of APIs: a Unix, Linux, GNOME, Mono stack for APIs that takes the most advantage of your Unix server and desktop and a set of APIs compatible with the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 that provides support for ASP.NET (web services and web forms), ADO.NET and many other components." And in a related story: darthcamaro writes "The drive to develop a FOSS implementation of Microsoft's .NET framework by DotGNU and Novell's Mono project is being painted as a contest between the Free and Open Source communities in an article on internetnews.com. The article details the running argument between DotGNU's Norbert Bollow and Mono's Miguel de Icaza on the issues of commercial involvement, software patents and all the 'religious' stuff that the Free software community holds against the open source community."

Comments

Mono Beta 2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the same as Stereo Alpha 1?

Re:What applications are there

[Tobias Luetke]

Well there is a compelete java vm which can run exclipse for mono. ( i know thats pretty hard to get the head around )

ikvm

also all major asp.net applications run

Worthy Cause, but Huge Barriers to Entry

[jacksonyee]

For Bollow, the decision to build a framework that is compatible with .NET is based on market reality. "In the industry, companies are using Microsoft stuff. The only way we can make it possible at acceptable cost to migrate to GNU/Linux is by making it possible for them to run their essential apps on both systems," he said. "My goal is to prevent Microsoft from catching the world in their .NET."

I agree with Bollow's reasoning and reality, but I fear that his sentiments may fall far short of his dream. He'll have to cope with

1. Trying to implement a moving standard as Microsoft continues to update libraries and APIs
2. Dealing with any incompatibilities and bugs within Microsoft's .NET code
3. Potential legal threats from miscellaneous things which Microsoft may choose to patent
4. Acceptance from both Microsoft supporters and Linux supporters to convince both sides to use one common platform

With that said, I think it's a very good idea to try to slowly nudge Microsoft developers over to other platforms, particularly if we come out with more advanced and/or convenient features than Microsoft's own standards. Nevertheless, time will tell whether this project pans out or not.

Re:Real-world examples of tangible benefits

[miguel]

We do support two stacks of APIs today in Mono: the Microsoft compatible stack (ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows.Forms) but we have been investing heavily in taking advantage of our own set of libraries that Linux, Unix, Gnome, X, Mozilla, CORBA specific.

For instance, Microsoft uses XmlSchema, Mono supports it, but distributed RelaxNG support as well.

We are working on Windows.Forms, but we also have strong bindings for Gtk# to build native applications. In fact MonoDevelop (www.monodevelop.org) is fully written using this stack.

We support the Microsoft database APIs, but we ship providers for all the open source (Postgress, MySQL, Sqlite) providers and other third party databases (DB2, Sybase, Oracle).

Tao is a backend agnostic set of 3D graphic APIs (OpenGL, Cg, SDL) while we still plan on supporting the Direct3D managed APIs.

Our set of APIs is what has allowed us to build things like MonoDevelop: a fairly complete IDE for Mono for developing Linux-based applications.

Re:What applications are there

[Trigun]

will the applications I write with this stack work on Windows?

If you write a pure C# program that does not use the GTK-Sharp , QT-sharp, or any other neat bindings, it should run. The very simple Hello World apps work.

I still think that the mono developers are straying a bit from what they should be doing. For the windows forms, they are relying on certain wine-libs. This works, but is not as elegant as it can be. Miguel was talking about the next incarnation of gnome being written in C#, essentially using the Gnome bindings for it. My opinion is that they should build gnome to natively handle the windows.forms portion. I am not so tied to the look of the applications as I am functionality. I could care less if Microsoft.office.NET looks like gnome when run on gnome.

Re:I'm an applications developer...

[miguel]

Yes, we are not able to fully support the
Windows.Forms API on the 1.0 timeframe (you can
get the previews, but they are not ready to ship).

Windows.Forms has a number of problems for
open source software anyways: for instance, it
does not do constraing-based layout, so for
every language that you want to support, you must
relayout your dialog boxes manually (or if you
have a larger font size).

By using Gtk# you take advantage of the Linux-specific
APIs and Linux-specific features (you can use
Gtk# on Windows, Linux and MacOS).

On the other hand, there is a community of
MacOS developers working on bindings to Cocoa
bindings to give them the same flexibility and
OS integration on the Mac.

Windows.Forms would give you a Windows-solution
everywhere.

We are going to support it for the sake of helping
Windows developers move to Unix, but it is not
a particularly great toolkit.

miguel.

Is the MONO project a ticking bomb?

[Eric Damron]

MONO is a very exciting concept. Having some degree of compatibility with Microsoft but with the current SCO-like strategies of litigating competition out of the picture and with the general feeling that Microsoft will use patents as a way of stifling it's biggest threat why should I feel good about the project?

Maybe someone can help me out here? What is going to prevent Microsoft from playing the patent card when it suits them?

Re:Is the MONO project a ticking bomb?

[RdsArts]

In like kind, I pose a question to you:

If patent problems exist, why go looking for them?

Could Python, Java, et al have patent problems? Maybe. Does Mono have patent problems? ABSOLUTELY. It is a known constant. The others are variables, they are wild-cards, they are unknowns.

So, at that point, it becomes a question of which is a lower risk. Anyone can see that a 1:x chance is a lot more less likely then a 1:1 chance.

Re:Does mono do SSL?

[miguel]

Hello,

Yes, thanks to the work of Carlos Guzman and
Sebastien Pouliot we now have support for TLS and
SSL (it is a fully managed implementation ;-)

miguel.

Re:What applications are there

[miguel]

Hello,

Part of the problem is that the Windows.Forms API
exposes an entry point to hook up to the win32
programming model the `WndProc' method override
on Control.

This is used to allow the developer to catch events
and process events that Windows.Forms might not
support directly with the managed API.

Also, since the Windows.Forms and Drawing APIs
are not comprehensive, developers of third-party
controls often depend on calling into Win32
calls (with P/Invokes). These are used for
special effects or more complicated behavior than
is available through the managed APIs.

For instance, a common scenario is embedding
the IE control and hook up to its DOM (see the
cute Reflector from Lutz Roeder).

Suboptimal, I know.

No VB.NET support

[Anonymous Coward]

I develop ASP.NET applications using VB.NET, and it's disappointing that the VB.NET development seems to be at a complete standstill. I've been tracking the mbas (Mono Basic) project since the beginning of the Mono project, and there's been virtually no activity on it. It appears to be the work of a single hacker in his non-existant spare time.

Although the official reason that GnomeBasic was dropped was because of "stagnation", the real reason that it died was because Mono was supposed to take it's place.

If that happened, I've seen no evidence of it.

While you can write Mono code in Java, PHP, Logo, Oberon, Pascal, Forth and Lisp, VB is still unavailable.

It's a pity such a popular language appears to be entirely ignored.

Re:No VB.NET support

[miguel]

A few updates on VB.NET:

We have a full time developer working on this
(Anirban) and you will see a lot of work on
compliance from him.

Mainsoft has donated a full VB.NET runtime that
we are now integrating.

Rafael and others have just obtained a grant
from the government of Brazil to complete the
VB.NET support in Mono.

And in addition to that, a few open source developers
work on it on their spare time.

You are right, the Open Source developers are not
particularly thrilled at doing VB.NET, but it is
important to bring developers from Windows, so
that is why the effort is being funded.

Miguel.

Re:What applications are there

[IamTheRealMike]

OK, so the fundamental issue here is one of toolkit quality.

You said that if you don't use GTK# your app will run on Windows. This is wrong. GTK# apps can work on Windows, or MacOS X just fine.

Understand this: the portability of an application is not defined by the type of machine (virtual or not) it's running on, it is by and large defined by the portability of the compilers and frameworks/libraries it relies upon.

GTK+ is a portable widget toolkit, it works pretty well on Windows and MacOS. The Win32 widget toolkit is not very portable, mostly because the only open source implementation is the Wine implementation and Wine by policy only concentrates on application compatibility, not on having nice pretty widgets.

So, if you are writing a .NET application you are best advised to use GTK# - this is true even if you are writing a program meant for Windows as in future if you wish to port things to another platform it will be a lot easier. There are a few other things to consider as well, such as the nicer API GTK has.

As to the DotGNU approach vs the Mono approach, basically I think you'd have to be insane to want to reimplement what Wine has done. Nobody is going to use System.Windows.Forms on Linux because it blows goats, everybody will use GTK# or (maybe when it is mature) Qt# - therefore a SWF implementation is useful only for application compatibility.

As to mapping S.W.F to Gnome/GTK, forget it. Back in the day (waaaaay back) Wine attempted to map the Win32 widget toolkit to Tk which was one of the better toolkits available back then. Didn't work. Widget toolkits differ too much to succesfully map between, and in particular the differential between a modern toolkit like GTK+ and Win32 is enormous - why do you think Microsoft are so keen to scrap it and start over with Avalon?

Re:What applications are there

[rootmon]

Yes, they already are ported. You can write GTK/GTK+/GTK# apps for Windows today.

See http://www.nullenvoid.com/gtksharp/wiki/index.php/ BuildingGuide?PHPSESSID=d0459fba82585e5219f9d4c95c 24721f
for an on-line guide.

I've been using GTK apps like GIMP and DIA at work where I'm stuck with Windows for a long time now.

GIMP Win32 installer: http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/

DIA Win32 installer:
http://dia-installer.sourceforge.net/

BTW there are very few if any "linux only" libs. Most of those libs are part of the GNU System, they work with the Linux kernel, BSD variants, Solaris, and most UNIX Systems. Many have Win32 ports or ports to the Cygwin POSIX environment for Windows.