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VS.Net Apps Can Now Run On Linux

Posted by Hemos on from the where-does-this-live-us dept.

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."

3 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. Well... by Darren+Winsper · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Well... by hey! · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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)?

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  2. Vanilla please by asliarun · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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!