VS.Net Apps Can Now Run On Linux

MxTxL writes "EWeek is reporting here about a plugin for Visual Studio.Net, called Grasshopper, that allows web applications that once only ran on IIS to be run on Tomcat or other J2EE platforms. The Mainsoft Developer Zone has more details on how it works but basically it converts the MS Intermediate Language into Java bytecode. The developer is also a supporter of the Mono Project."

Comments

Well...

[Darren Winsper]

Considering that, using XSP or mod_mono, it's possible to run ASP.Net web applications on Linux using Mono itself, this is hardly a new development.

Anyhow, there's no such thing as a "VS.Net App". It's been possible to compile .Net applications using VS.Net and run them on Mono (with certain exceptions) for a long time now.

Re:Well...

[hey!]

Well, I'd say you're the victim of another poorly titled article.

I'd have titled it "VS.Net applications now run on J2EE Servlet Containers".

Personally, I think this is cool, but not Earth shaking. The most important reasons for users to do this would be to either migrate to J2EE or to get access to Java standard libraries. Since people on the MS side of the fence tend to rely heavily on the IDE to do a lot of the heavy lifting, I'm not sure it helps them that much. They can't maintain the software except by targeting the dotNet environment; their IDE doesn't know anything about the Java standard libraries or the J2EE container facilities. Maybe if they wanted to prototype stuff in VS IDE and then add things like security using filters or byte code modification to do AOPish method interception.

In any case I see three possible applications. First, if some horrible security hole is found in IIS, you can get off in a hurry and deal with the maintenance issues down the line. Second, you may decide to use this to scale a successful application up using midrange iron. Third, you can show your boss that servlet containers do everything your application needs (but we all knew that, didn't we)?

Maybe im missing something here..

[t_allardyce]

..but wasn't the whole point of dot net platform independence !?!

Vanilla please

[asliarun]

I think that half-baked solutions like this plugin is a bad idea, at least for code that will land up in production servers. I would prefer a vanilla implementation anyday. By porting a .NET assembly (or IL code) to Java bytecode, i would be unnecessarily increasing the chances of getting wierd or untraceable bugs. Then, there's the question of maintaining the ported code.

A better albeit more time-consuming solution would be to rewrite the source code itself. The plugin in question might possibly be of some use if we need to quickly port a small application from .NET to Java. But for an enterprise or complex system, no way!

Re:Vanilla please

[asliarun]

" How is this different from ordinary .NET development. You get weird and untraceable bugs in .NET normally."

The same can be said for ANY platform. The number of bugs that you'll encounter is a function of the quality of your system architecture and the quality of code that you write, NOT the platform. The .NET framework, in its current stage (1.1) is a reasonably stable and robust platform, and is no better or worse than the other alternatives.

"My guess is that you are either a student (Or recent Grad), work for a government agency, or Non Profit agency, education, or a Really big company that has a lot of disposable money. time-consuming == waisted money."

Yes, i do work in a reasonably big company, and i've developed over 10 medium-scale and enterprise solutions. Believe you me, no company has money to throw away. Every decision has to be justified across several parameters, namely ROI, stability, performance, maintainability, and so on. Furthermore, funding for a project comes out of a department, not from the company itself. Hence, your argument of a big company having a limitless budget is irrelevant, as the (big company's) department budget is never limitless. In fact, it might be much less that the budget of say, a startup or a much smaller company.

Again, i'm not saying that the plugin serves no purpose. All i'm saying is that this mechanism of porting to a different platform is only limited for simple and non-critical applications. As a project manager or a technical lead, are you willing to stake your reputation (or your career) and say that the ported Java code will be as stable as the original .NET code?

Will the plugin successfully translate a remoting application, a web service with SOAP serialization, an ASP.NET application that extensively uses HTTP Handlers and HTTP Modules?? A lot of features that exist in .NET, and ASP.NET/IIS don't even have an equivalent in the other frameworks. How about something as simple as delegates or the ASP.NET support for out-of-process sessions (state servers), which you NEED for a web farm deployment?

Re:java ripoff

[DigitumDei]

While anything is possible, microsoft is not in the business of making money from sueing. Yes they have patents, do they use them in the same way as SCO, no.