* Contributing to the Mono project
There are many ways in which you can help in the Mono project:
Those are just broad things that need to be worked on, but
something that would help tremendously would be to help with
small duties in the project that need to be addressed.
** To start contributing
To start developing classes or to contribute to the compiler,
you only need Windows and the .NET Beta 2 SDK. Please notice
that you do not need Visual Studio (although you can use it if
you want).
You can get it here
Alternatively you can use the compilation service that was setup by
Derek.
** Bug reporting
If you find bugs in Mono, please make sure you enter a bug
report so we can keep track of problems in Mono.
To enter bug reports go to
http://bugzilla.ximian.com and enter bug reports against
your favorite component (Mono, Runtime, C# compiler).
** Small tasks
A few smaller tasks are here, dropped in no particular order:
* Mono/doc and web site: They need to be
packaged up in the official `distribution'
* Adding serialization support to all the classes.
We have many classes, but we have not implemented in
many cases the serialization and re-incarnation support in
them (this is pretty straight forward code, and simple,
but there is a lot to be done here).
* C# Compilation Service
If you are working on a class for the Mono project, but do not
have a C# compiler available or a Windows machine to run the
.NET SDK, you can use the compilation service that Derek
Holden setup in the following URL: http://toilet.2y.net:8080/
The service will let you compile a source file and get back a
list of errors in the class file. You will not be able to run
the code, but at least you can get some code written that will
help us further down the line.
You can contact (and thank) Derek for this service by sending
him nice email at derek@draper.com
* Books on C# and DotNet.
* Dotnet Books (http://www.dotnetbooks.com)
* Dotnet Resources (
http://www.dotnetexperts.com/resources)
* O'Reilly C# Essentials (
http://www.oreally.com/catalog/csharpess)
* O'Really .NET Essentials (
http://www.oreally.com/catalog/dotnetfrmess)
* Special note
If you have looked at Microsoft's implementation of .NET or
their shared source code, you may not be able to contribute
to Mono. Details will follow when we know more about this.
In general be careful when you are implementing free software
and you have access to proprietary code. We need to make sure
that we are not using someone else's copyrighted code
accidentally.
Please do not use the ildasm program to disassemble
proprietary code when you are planning to reimplement a class
for Mono. If you have done this, we might not be able to use
your code.
Please stick to published documentation for implementing any
classes.