1 * Contributing to the Mono project
3 Mono has not been completed yet. It is a project under
4 active development and with a vibrant community. If you are
5 looking at ways of helping the project, you have come to the
8 There are three different philosophical approaches to helping
9 the Mono project, the selfish way, the altruistic or the
12 The <b>selfish</b> way is packed with adventure. You start by
13 building your own software, and start using the compiler and
14 tools that come with Mono. Eventually you will run into
15 missing features, or a bug in the software. Since we ship all
16 the source code for Mono, you can start tracking down the
17 problem. Depending on how much time you have to devote to the
18 problem you could: <a href="http://bugzilla.ximian.com">File a
19 bug report</a>; track down the problem and provide a better
20 <a href="http://bugzilla.ximian.com">bug report</a>; fix the
21 bug and provide a patch (you can <a
22 href="mailto:mono-list@ximian.com">post it</a> to the <a
23 href="http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-list">mono
24 mailing list</a>; or discuss the solution on the mailing
25 list. Ideally you will also write a <a
26 href="testing.html">regression test</a> so the bug does not
27 get re-introduced in the future.
29 The <b>altruistic</b> is probably the easiest because you get
30 to pick a piece of Mono that you might want to work on. You
31 can pick an unfinished <a href="class-library.html">class</a> (from our <a
32 href="class-status.html">class status page</a>); help with the
33 <a href="documentation.html">documentation effort</a> (<a
34 href="http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-docs-list">mailing
35 list for the documentation effort</a>); fix existing <a
36 href=http://bugzilla.ximian.com/buglist.cgi?product=Mono%2FClass+Libraries&product=Mono%2FRuntime&component=CORLIB&component=misc&component=System&component=System.Web&component=System.XML&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&email1=&emailtype1=substring&emailassigned_to1=1&email2=&emailtype2=substring&emailreporter2=1&changedin=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=&short_desc=&short_desc_type=substring&long_desc=&long_desc_type=substring&bug_file_loc=&bug_file_loc_type=substring&keywords=&keywords_type=anywords&op_sys_details=&op_sys_details_type=substring&version_details=&version_details_type=substring&cmdtype=doit&newqueryname=&order=Reuse+same+sort+as+last+time&form_name=query">runtime
38 href="http://bugzilla.ximian.com/buglist.cgi?product=Mono%2FMCS&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&email1=&emailtype1=substring&emailassigned_to1=1&email2=&emailtype2=substring&emailreporter2=1&changedin=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=&short_desc=&short_desc_type=substring&long_desc=&long_desc_type=substring&bug_file_loc=&bug_file_loc_type=substring&keywords=&keywords_type=anywords&op_sys_details=&op_sys_details_type=substring&version_details=&version_details_type=substring&cmdtype=doit&newqueryname=&order=Reuse+same+sort+as+last+time&form_name=query">compiler
39 bugs</a>; help with the <a href="tools.html">tools</a> or
40 writing <a href="testing.html">tests</a> that help make Mono
41 more robust or help with the <a
42 href="http://www.go-mono.com/winforms.html">Winforms
45 The <b>educational</b> way is an interesting one, because you
46 pick a technology you are interested in, and work on that
47 technology to learn the technology.
49 Those are just broad things that need to be worked on, but
50 something that would help tremendously would be to help with
51 small duties in the project that need to be addressed.
53 You can see what needs to be done in the class libraries <a href="class-status.html">here</a>
57 Many developers get together on the <b>#mono</b> irc channel
58 on the <b>irc.gnome.org</b> server.
60 ** To start contributing
62 As a programmer, you can contribute in three different scenarios to Mono:
65 * If you only have Linux/Unix.
66 * If you only have Windows.
68 * If you have both Linux and Windows.
71 You might also want to check our <a href="#setup">common
72 setups</a> section that describes some common setups that people
73 use while working on Mono.
75 *** Contributing to the class library, regression tests or the compiler
77 This only requires Windows currently.
79 To start developing classes or to contribute to the compiler,
80 you only need Windows and the .NET Framework 1.0 SDK. Please notice
81 that you do not need Visual Studio (although you can use it if
82 you want). The .NET Framework SDK requires some version of
83 Windows XP or Windows NT. If you are running Windows 98, 95
84 or Me, you could use instead the <a
85 href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/default.asp?url=/downloads/sample.asp?url=/msdn-files/027/001/829/msdncompositedoc.xml">.NET Redist package</a>, but it
86 lacks the documentation browser and the ildasm program (C#, VB, JScript and IL
87 assembler are included).
89 You can get it <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/default.asp?url=/downloads/sample.asp?url=/msdn-files/027/000/976/msdncompositedoc.xml&frame=true">here</a>
91 If you are new to .NET, writing regression tests is a good way
92 of starting to contribute: it will help you get used to C# as
93 well as getting comfortable with the .NET APIs.
95 This helps because at this point you might be the best
96 qualified person to fix a problem found by the regression
97 test, or you might have a new class to implement in the .NET
98 world that only has a test suite.
100 To get started writing tests see the <a href="testing.html">Test Suite</a>
101 section. <a href="mono-contribution-howto.html">Here</a> there is a good All-In-One introduction to the art of writing tests.
104 *** Contributing to the runtime engine
106 This only requires Linux, currently some tasks are easier if you
107 have access to Windows as well.
109 Here are a few things you can do:
111 * Port the runtime to other architectures.
112 * Port the runtime to other operating systems.
113 * Finish the IL code verifier in the runtime.
114 * Hack the JIT, improve the code generator, add new
115 pattern rules, improve the register allocator.
116 * Implement the debugging interfaaces
121 If you find bugs in Mono, please make sure you enter a bug
122 report so we can keep track of problems in Mono.
124 To enter bug reports go to <a href="http://bugzilla.ximian.com">
125 http://bugzilla.ximian.com</a> and enter bug reports against
126 your favorite component (Mono, Runtime, C# compiler).
128 You can review the list of current bugs by going <a href="http://bugzilla.ximian.com/buglist.cgi?product=Mono%2FClass+Libraries&product=Mono%2FMCS&product=Mono%2FRuntime&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&email1=&emailtype1=substring&emailassigned_to1=1&email2=&emailtype2=substring&emailreporter2=1&changedin=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=&short_desc=&short_desc_type=substring&long_desc=&long_desc_type=substring&bug_file_loc=&bug_file_loc_type=substring&keywords=&keywords_type=anywords&op_sys_details=&op_sys_details_type=substring&version_details=&version_details_type=substring&cmdtype=doit&order=%27Importance%27&form_name=query">here</a>
132 A few smaller tasks are here, dropped in no particular order:
134 * <b>Mono/doc and web site:</b> They need to be
135 packaged up in the official `distribution'
137 * Adding serialization support to all the classes.
139 We have many classes, but we have not implemented in
140 many cases the serialization and re-incarnation support in
141 them (this is pretty straight forward code, and simple,
142 but there is a lot to be done here).
147 Brad Merryl's C# mode for Emacs is available: <a
148 href="http://www.cybercom.net/~zbrad/DotNet/Emacs/">http://www.cybercom.net/~zbrad/DotNet/Emacs/</a>
150 * Books on C# and DotNet.
153 * Dotnet Books (<a href="http://www.dotnetbooks.com">http://www.dotnetbooks.com</a>)
155 * Dotnet Resources (<a href="http://www.dotnetexperts.com/resources/">
156 http://www.dotnetexperts.com/resources</a>)
158 * O'Reilly C# Essentials (<a href="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/csharpess/">
159 http://www.oreally.com/catalog/csharpess</a>)
161 * O'Really .NET Essentials (<a href="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/dotnetfrmess/">
162 http://www.oreally.com/catalog/dotnetfrmess</a>)
168 People running both Linux and Windows while contributing to
169 Mono use a number of tricks to increase their productivity.
174 * <b>Linux host and Windows host</b>
176 The Windows file system is shared (right click on
177 your hard drive icon, and select sharing, allow this
180 The Windows machine has the required build tools
181 (cygwin, and the .NET framework). On the Windows
182 machine, you want to setup the ssh server (run the
183 ssh-host-config program to configure your ssh) and
184 run it (from a cygwin terminal, type: /usr/sbin/sshd).
186 From the Linux side, you want to mount the Windows
187 file system, using something like this:
190 mount -t smbfs -o uid=miguel,username="Miguel de Icaza" "//quack/c$" /mnt
193 In the above example, my Linux user name is
194 `miguel', and this will allow this user to have
195 read/write access to the share.
197 The host name is `quack', and the name of the share
198 is `c$' (that is the C: partition).
200 The file system is accessible on /mnt.
202 You can perform your cvs update and cvs commits from
203 the /mnt directory, and run Emacs or your favorite
204 Linux text editor on the Unix side in this way.
206 Then from another terminal, you can ssh into your
207 Windows box using ssh, like this: ssh "Miguel de Icaza@quack"
212 If you have looked at Microsoft's implementation of .NET or
213 their shared source code, you may not be able to contribute
214 to Mono. Details will follow when we know more about this.
216 In general be careful when you are implementing free software
217 and you have access to proprietary code. We need to make sure
218 that we are not using someone else's copyrighted code
221 Please do not use the <b>ildasm</b> program to disassemble
222 proprietary code when you are planning to reimplement a class
223 for Mono. If you have done this, we might not be able to use
226 Please stick to published documentation for implementing any