3 The MonoNet runtime will implement the JIT engine (and a byte
4 code interpreter for quickly porting to new systems), the
5 class loader, the garbage collector, threading system and
6 metadata access libraries.
8 Currently the runtime contains the beginning of an image
9 loader and metadata access entry points. Since Beta2 has been
10 now released, it is possible to resume work using the ECMA
11 specs and testing with Beta2-generated executables.
13 The runtime core will be implemented in C, in a library
16 ** Executing MSIL/CIL images
18 The code will load an executable and map the references to
19 external assemblies to our own version of the assemblies on
22 Our roadmap looks like this:
24 * Milestone 1: Fully read and parse all CIL byte-codes
25 and metadata tokens (ie, a disassembler).
27 * Milestone 2: Complete an interpreter for CIL byte
28 codes. This interpreter can be used temporarly to
29 run CIL byte code on a system where no JIT is
32 * Milestone 3: IA32 translating-JIT engine.
34 * Milestone 4: non-Intel port of the JIT engine.
36 * Milestone 5: Optimizing JIT engine port for IA32.
38 * Milestone 6: non-Intel port of the Optimizing JIT
41 A setup similar to the Kaffe JIT engine can be used to
42 layout the code to support non-IA32 architectures. Our work
43 will be focused on getting a IA32 version running first.
45 The JIT engine should work on Linux and Win32, although you
46 might need to install the CygWin32 development tools to get a
47 Unix-like compilation environment which is what we know how to
52 We have decided to implement a tracing garbage collector,
53 which is very similar to the one being used by .NET. For an
54 introduction to the garbage collection system used by
55 Microsoft's CLR implementation, you can read this book on <a
56 href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471941484/o/qid=992556433/sr=2-1/ref=aps_sr_b_1_1/103-5866388-0492603">Garbage
59 Although using a conservative garbage collector like Bohem's
60 would work, all the type information is available at runtime,
61 so we can actually implement a better collector than a
62 conservative collector.
66 PInvoke will be supported, and will be used to wrap Unix API
67 calls, these in turn are required for reusing some of the
68 GNOME libraries that will reduce the work we have to do to
69 deliver a complete class library