4 <a href="http://www.ximian.com">Ximian</a> announced the
5 launch of the Mono project, an effort to create an Open Source
6 implementation of the .NET Development Framework.
8 Mono includes: <a href="c-sharp.html">a compiler</a> for the
9 C# language, a <a href="runtime.html">runtime</a> for the
10 Common Language Infrastructure and a set of <a
11 href="class-library.html">class libraries</a>.
13 You can read our <a href="rationale.html">rationale</a> for
14 this project. If you have questions about the project, please
15 read our list of <a href="faq.html">Frequently Asked
16 Questions</a> or <a href="mailto:mono-list@ximian.com">contact us.</a>
18 You might also want to <a href="download.html">Download the
19 source</a> for our work so far. Or you can grab a <a
20 href="snapshots">snapshot</a> of our current work.
23 href="mailing-lists.html">subscribe</a> to our mono-list
24 and mono-announce-list
26 You can contact the team at: <a
27 href="mailto:mono-list@ximian.com">mono-list@ximian.com</a>
30 <table border=1 bgcolor>
35 <b><a href="c-sharp.html">Compiler</a></b>
38 Self hosting on .NET.<br>
39 Classes need work to run on Mono.
56 In progress: StrongARM, SPARC.
61 <b><a href="class-status.html">Classes</a></b>
64 Corlib for self hosting mostly done
74 Paolo posted a list of <a
75 href=http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/mono-list/2002-February/003266.html">ways
76 you can help</a> if you do not have Windows right now. Sergey followed up with
77 <a href="http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/mono-list/2002-February/003268.html">his</a>
82 StrongARM port from Sergey Chaban has been checked into CVS.
86 SPARC: 44 out of 74 tests pass now (Jeff)
88 Power PC: delegates are working now (Radek)
92 <b>Mono 0.9 has been released!</b>
94 A new version of the runtime, compiler and class libraries has
95 been packaged for your download pleasure. The <a
96 href="archive/mono-0.9">Release Notes</a>
99 href="download.html#feb-22">Here</a> (quick links: <a
100 href="archive/mono-0.9.tar.gz">runtime</a> and <a
101 href="archive/mcs-0.9.tar.gz">compiler/classes</a>).
105 Paolo got our compiler natively to compile 117 of our tests.
106 Self hosting is closer every day.
108 Unsafe support is finished in the C# compiler.
112 Gaurav got DataGrid and DataGridItemCollection done.
114 C# compiler: Unsafe support is mostly complete (only stackalloc is missing).
116 New easy to run scripts for compiling Mono on Unix and Windows
117 is <a href="download.html">available</a>. We can now easily compile
118 Mono on Windows and Linux. If you had trouble before, use the
119 above scripts which will get the setup right for you.
121 There are now three machines that can provide AnonCVS, just
122 use anoncvs.go-mono.com as the hostname for your CVSROOT and
123 you will get one of the machines.
127 Do you want to see what <a href="http://people.debian.org/~lupus/mono/">Mono Looks Like?</a>
131 Application Domains now support the two LoaderOptimization
132 modes: share code or do not share code, and you can control
133 this with the --share-code command line option.
135 Paolo has now 100+ test cases run on Linux now with our class
138 PowerPC and SPARC ports are moving along (Radek and Jeff)
142 Excellent news since the 11th, here is a quick rundown:
144 AppDomains have been deployed (Dietmar). Socket work is done
145 (Dick). Corlib compiled with no refs to mscorlib (Dan). New
146 comprehensive tests for colib bits (David). Nick is driving the
147 regression test suite efforts and class library completeness.
148 New System.Data work (Chris). Bug fixes (Paolo, Duncan, Ravi, Miguel)
150 Miguel is off to the <a
151 href="http://www.fosdem.org">FOSDEM</a> conference in Brussels.
155 <b>Mono 0.8 has been released!</b>
157 A new version of the runtime, compiler and class libraries has
158 been packaged for your download pleasure.
161 href="download.html#feb-11">Here</a> (quick links: <a
162 href="archive/mono-0.8.tar.gz">runtime</a> and <a
163 href="archive/mcs-0.8.tar.gz">compiler/classes</a>)
167 We would like to welcome all the new developers that have
168 joined the project in the last couple of days. The classes
171 An explanation of the relationship between <a
172 href="http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-hackers/2002-February/msg00031.html">GNOME
175 Nick is still leading our test suite platform. I can not
176 stress how important it is to have a good regression test suite
177 for our platform, as buggy class libraries are what are
178 stopping the compiler from running completely on Linux.
180 We are of course psyched to see Mono run on
181 non-Linux systems. Work is moving on native code generation
182 for StrongARM, PowerPC, and SPARC as well as porting Mono to
185 There are a couple of debates on the Mono list on implementing
186 a set of web server classes for <a
187 href="http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/mono-list/2002-February/002911.html">enabling
191 href="http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/mono-list/2002-February/002944.html">
192 posted a list of pending tasks</a> to enable the compiler to run on Linux
196 Mike Kestner has posted an <a
197 href="http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/gtk-sharp-list/2002-February/000024.html">Update
198 on his Gtk#</a> activities.
203 href="http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/mono-list/2002-February/002808.html">Qt
204 bindings</a> for .NET. Adam is cool.
208 Dan Lewis has contributed a major missing set of classes to
210 href="http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/mono-list/2002-January/002745.html">
211 System.Text.RegularExpressions</a>.
213 This is a fully .NET compatible implementation of the .NET regular expressions,
214 fully Unicode aware. This contribution is very appreciated, as implementing this
215 was not entirely trivial (supporting Unicode, plus a regex engine which is a super
216 set of the Perl regex engine).
220 The Mono contributors have relicensed the Class Libraries under
222 <a href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html">MIT X11</a> license.
224 This license is an Open Source license, and is used by other projects
225 (most notably, the XFree86 project).
227 The runtime (JIT, metadata library, interpreter) remains under
228 the LGPL and the C# compiler remains under the GPL.
231 href="http://www.ximian.com/about_us/press_center/press_releases/mono_partners.html">Press
235 href="http://news.com.com/2100-1001-823734.html">CNet</a>, <a
236 href="http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,50037-2,00.html">Wired</a>,
237 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/01/28/020128hnopennet.xml">InfoWorld</a>,
238 <a href="http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/01/27/2232231">NewsForge</a>.
242 New mailing list: <a href="mailto:mono-patches-request@ximian.com">mono-patches@ximian.com</a>.
243 This mailing list will receive automatically the patches that are submitted
244 to the Mono CVS to any of its modules.
246 This allows anyone who wants to participate in the peer-review of the
247 code submitted to CVS to receive patches on e-mail. It should also
248 expose to everyone the changes that are being done by the team every day.
252 Dick has got a simple web server running with Mono (`MIS: Mono
253 Internet Server') that is mostly used to test our IO layer, a
254 <a href="http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/dick-mis-server.png">screenshot</a>
256 Paolo and Dietmar are busy making our runtime self sufficient on
257 non-Windows platforms.
259 C# compiler front: A lot of focus in the past weeks after
260 the C# became self hosting has been in making the compiler a useful
261 tool for development: improve error handling, provide better error
262 reports, fixing all known bugs, and finally profiling of the compiler
267 Our compiler has been self-supporting since January 3rd. In
268 the meantime, we have been busy working on making it run on
269 Linux. Today Paolo got more work done on Reflection.Emit and
270 the compiler compiled `console.cs' (a sample Mono program) on
275 Dietmar landed the Unicode support patch. Class libraries and
276 runtimes are now fully Unicode aware. The details are <a href=
277 "http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/mono-list/2002-January/002409.html">
280 Last minute breaking news: Paolo got our compiler in Linux to
281 compile fib.cs, patches are comming tomorrow once we have
286 Mike Kestner posted an update on Gtk# <a
287 href="http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/gtk-sharp-list/2002-January/000021.html"><i>New
288 year, new direction</i></a>.
290 Gtk# will be our foundation on which we will be implementing
291 System.Windows.Forms.
295 Mono C# compiler becomes self-sufficient. We can now continue
296 development of the compiler with itself.
298 Work on the class libraries is still underway for having a full
299 self hosting system. We hope to achieve our goal of self-hosting
300 on Linux before the end of the month.
302 Join the fun by downloading either tonight's <a
303 href="snapshots">snapshot</a> or getting your sources from our
304 <a href="anoncvs.html">Anonymous CVS server</a>.
308 After a lot of work, the C# compiler can compile itself.
309 There are still errors in the generated image, but they are
312 We will soon have the first non-Microsoft C# implementation!
316 JIT: More work on our IO abstraction layer (Dick).
318 JIT: exception handling for unmanaged code (Dietmar)
320 System.Reflection: Support for PropertyInfo and
321 PropertyBuilder as well as the various queries for MethodBase.
323 C#: Pre-processor; Rewrite of MemberLookup which fixed many of
324 the outstanding issues. More bug fixing allows it to compile
329 Dietmar has improved the register allocation and now Mono performs
330 two to three times as fast as it did yesterday. Amazing.
332 The compiler keeps moving along, explicit interface
333 implementation is there.
337 The JIT engine can now run all the compiler regression tests as
338 well as assorted other programs, many more opcodes added
339 recently. Currently the JIT engine uses a very simplistic register
340 allocator (just enough to allow us to focus on feature completeness)
341 and that will be the next major task to improve performance and
342 reduce spills and reloads.
344 On the C# compiler front: language features are now pretty
345 much complete. The big missing tasks are unsafe code support,
346 visibility, explicit interface implementation plus static flow
347 analysis. There are many small bugs that need to be addressed.
349 You can get your copy of the <a href="snapshots">latest Mono</a>
351 More work is also required on fixing the foundation class
352 libraries, it is easy to find spots now since Nick got the
357 AnonCVS access to Mono is here (updated every hour). Thanks
358 to <a href="http://www.hispalinux.es">HispaLinux</a> and Jesus
359 Climent for helping to set this up.
363 All tests from the mono runtime work with the JIT engine now
366 Recursive enumeration definition in the C# compiler are
369 More work on the Web classes (Gaurav).
373 JIT land: Paolo got GDB support into the JIT engine while
374 Dietmar added exceptions support to it.
376 The C# compiler supports all array initializations now, and the
377 switch statement as well as fixing many existing bugs. Many
380 Nick keeps working on improving our class library test suite.
382 Dick has almost completed the Mono IO layer.
387 Mike Kestner has posted an <a
388 href="http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/gtk-sharp-list/2001-November/000015.html">update</a>
395 Paolo today got the Mono C# compiler running <a
396 href="http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/mono-list/2001-November/001941.html">on
397 Linux</a>. It compiles a sample program and then the sample
400 Mutator unary operators (++ and --) in the compiler are fully
401 functional, they used to only work on variables, and now they
404 To sum things up: The Mono C# compiler is written in C# and
405 uses the .NET classes to get its work done. To make this work
406 on Linux work has to happen in various fronts:
408 * The C# compiler is being worked on and can compile
409 many programs now (our test suite at this point is
410 made up of 40 tests).
412 * The class libraries need to be mature enough to support
413 the compiler, particularly System.Reflection.Emit (which is
414 what Paolo has been working on lately).
416 The compiler currently requires 103 classes from the
417 .NET runtime (you can get the list by running: <b>monodis --typeref mcs.exe</b>
419 * The interpreter should be mature enough to run the actual
420 compiler byte codes and the corlib bytecodes.
423 At the same time, Dietmar is working on the JIT engine which will
424 replace our interpreter in production.
430 Dietmar got value types working on the JIT engine. Sean has
431 got assembly loading in the runtime (required for NUnit).
433 More progress on enumerations and attributes from Ravi.
435 Nick keeps working on improving our class libraries.
441 Enumerations, array access and attributes for the C# compiler are into the CVS now.
443 Full array support is not complete, but moving along.
449 Dietmar's new set of patches to the JIT have 20 out of 33
456 Mike Kestner, main Gtk# contributor has posted a very interesting <a
457 href="http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/gtk-sharp-list/2001-November/000013.html">
458 update</a> on his work on Gtk#.
460 Ravi commited the initial support for Attributes in the
463 Many HTML Controls from Leen checked into CVS.
465 Paolo checked in his new System.Reflection and
466 System.Reflection.Emit implementations. He has been working
467 steadily on this huge task for a few weeks now. This is the
468 foundation for the Mono C# compiler, and hence a very
469 important piece of the puzzle.
475 Many clean ups have been going into the class library by Nick Drochak.
477 Mega patch from Dietmar: he commited the flow analysis code
480 A lot of work has been going into the WebControls by Gaurav (4
481 new controls plus improved and bug fixed base classes).
487 Ravi commited the caller-side method selection of methods with
488 variable length arguments. Now he depends on Miguel finishing
489 the array handling support.
495 Lots of classes for System.Web from Gaurav were commited this
498 Some large recent developments:
500 The Decimal implementation from Martin Weindel has been
501 partially integrated (we need to put the internalcalls in
502 place now and compile and link the decimal code).
504 Derek Holden commited recently the IntegerFormatter code into
505 the CVS, so we got a pretty comprehensive integer formatting
506 engine that we can finally use all over the place.
508 Compiler got support for lock as well as assorted bug fixes.
509 Ravi is still working on array support (and then we can
510 optimize foreach for the array case).
512 Dietmar is busy working on flow analysis on the JITer, the
513 previous mechanism of generating the forest was wrong. Paolo
514 has been a busy bee reworking the System.Reflection.Emit
515 support code, and we should have some pretty nice stuff next
516 week. Dick on the other hand is still working on the
517 WaitOne/WaitAll emulation code. WaitAll is like select on
518 steroids: it can wait for different kinds of objects: files,
519 mutexes, events and a couple of others.
521 Mike Kestner is busy working on Gtk# which is now using the
522 .defs files to quickly wrap the API.
528 Reworking expressions to support cleanly indexers and
529 properties. <a href="http://www.nat.org/evolution.php3">11
530 days</a> until Evolution 1.0 ships.
532 Ximian users around the world <!--a
533 href="http://www.bez.it/IMAGES/nora.jpg"-->rejoice<!--/a--> with
534 recent C# compiler progress.
540 Delegate support has been checked into the compiler
541 (definition and invocation); break/continue implemented.
547 JIT engine supports many of the object constructs now (object
548 creation, vtable setup, interface table setup).
550 The C# compiler now has almost full property support (only
551 missing bit are pre-post increment/decrement operations),
552 delegates are now created (still missing delegate invocation).
553 try/catch/finally is also supported in the compiler now.
555 System.Decimal implementation is in, as well as many crypto
562 Sergey has released his first version of the <b>ilasm</b>
563 assembler written in C#. You can get it from his web page:
565 href="http://mono.eurosoft.od.ua">http://mono.eurosoft.od.ua</a>.
567 The plan is to integrate ildasm into the Mono CVS soon. This
568 component should in theory also be reusable for SharpDevelop
575 Our System.Reflection.Emit implementation created its first
576 executable today. This means that a very simple .NET program
577 that was compiled on Windows was able to generate a .NET program
578 while running on Linux using the Mono runtime.
580 The various piece of the puzzle are starting to get together:
581 the compiler can compile simple programs now and we are
582 basically focusing on completeness now.
589 href="http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/default.asp">Sharp
590 Develop 0.80</a> was released today.
596 More progress: more opcodes are working (Paolo); The compiler
597 runs up to a point in Mint (Paolo); operator overloading works
598 (both unary and binary) all over the place (Miguel); Completed decimal
599 type conversions (Miguel); New build system in place based on
600 Ant (Sean and Sergey); Refactored and documented the
601 internals of the JIT engine (Dietmar); StatementExpressions
602 handled correctly (Miguel).
608 A couple of news-worthy items: Dick got the initial thread
609 support into mint; Paolo implemented many new opcodes; Dietmar
610 got long operations and mul/div working on the JITer; Ravi rewrote
611 the Method selector for expressions to be conformant; Miguel
612 got i++ working. All in tonight's snapshot
618 Paolo has written a section on <a href="porting.html">Porting
619 Mono</a> to othre architectures.
625 <A a href="download.html#sep-18">Mono 0.7</a> has been
626 released (runtime engine, class libraries
627 and C# compiler). Check the <a href="archive/mono-0.7">Mono
628 0.7 announcement</a> for details
634 Mike Kestner's Gtk# (Gtk-sharp) was checked into the CVS
635 repository. Gtk# can run a simple hello world application.
636 The binding is nice, as it maps Gtk+ signals to delegates in
637 C#. You can see the Gtk# Hello World program <a href="src/HelloWorld.cs">here</a>
639 Gtk-sharp should be available on the next snapshot set.
645 Dietmar checked in his CIL tree/forest regeneration and most
646 importantly, the x86 instruction selector burg grammar.
653 The MCS compiler <b>can compile the sample Hello World</b>
654 application and generate a Windows/CIL executable that runs!
656 This executable runs with the Mono Interpreter of course (see
663 Dietmar checked into CVS the `monoburg' architecture
664 independent instruction selector for the JIT engine.
670 <b>.NET Hello World is working under Mono!</b> The latest snapshots
673 Hello World consits of 1821 CIL instructions,
674 performs 66 subroutine calls and loads 12 classes from the corlib.dll
682 Lloyd Dupont has announced his OpenGL bindings for C#, they
683 are available here: <a
684 href="http://csgl.sourceforge.net">http://csgl.sourceforge.net</a>
690 New version of the Mono Runtime, Compiler and Classes has been
692 href="download.html#august-22">released.</a> Check the <a
693 href="archive/mono-0.6">0.6 announcement</a>.
699 A new <a href="contributing.html#compile-service">Compilation
700 service</a> has been made available by Derek to allow people
701 without access to the <a
702 href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/default.asp?url=/downloads/sample.asp?url=/msdn-files/027/000/976/msdncompositedoc.xml&frame=true">.NET SDK</a>
708 Daily snapshots of mcs and mono are now available, they will
709 run every night at 10pm Boston time.
715 Mono Runtime 0.5 has been <a
716 href="download.html#july-29">released.</a> Check the <a
717 href="archive/mono-0.5">release notes</a>
723 The slides for <A href="Presentations/O-Reilly">my
724 presentation</a> at <a href="http://www.oreilly.com">O'Reilly
725 Open Source Software Convention</a>
731 Another release of the class libraries is out, check the <a
732 href="archive/mcs-22">MCS 22-July Release Notes</a>. You can
733 get the new class libraries from <a
734 href="download.html#july-22">here</a>
740 Another release of the class libraries is out, check the <a
741 href="archive/mcs-19">MCS 19-July Release Notes</a>. You can
742 get the new class libraries from <a
743 href="download.html#july-19">here</a>
749 Another release of the class libraries is out, check the <a
750 href="archive/mcs-17">MCS 17-July Release Notes</a>. You can
751 get the new class libraries from <a
752 href="download.html#july-17">here</a>
754 Do not forget to check out the updated <a href="faq.html">FAQ</a>.
756 Got Sean's new <a href="class-status/index.html">Class
757 Status</a> web pages up. These are a lot better than mine, and
758 we are now keeping better track of contributors.
764 Another release of Mono is out, check the <a
765 href="archive/mono-0.4">Mono 0.4 Release Notes</a>. Get it <a
766 href="download.html#july-15">here</a>.
773 href="http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/mono-list/2001-July/000399.html">new
775 runtime, compiler and classes has been made. Get it <a href="download.html#july-14">here</a>
781 I keep getting questions about my opinion on Passport, even when
782 Mono has <b>nothing</b> to do with it. I finally <a
783 href="passport.html">wrote something.</a>
795 Brian posted a story on <a
796 href="http://www.oreillynet.com/dotnet">O'Reilly Network .NET</a>