* ASP.NET
ASP.NET support is divided in two pieces:
* Web Forms (Web Applications infrastructure).
* Web Services (the SOAP-based rpc system).
Both are functional at this point, and applications like
"IBuySpy" run with Mono.
ASP.NET works either embedded into
our XSP server test server or the mod_mono Apache module.
We are now working bug fixing and adding missing features
after making the whole pipeline compatible with MS.
Tim started work on the Web Services. Lluis is in charge of
it now and web services are now supported. He also added a web
service sample to the XSP server set of tests.
** Hosting
ASP.NET provides a hosting interface. Today we ship support
for two different hosting mechanisms:
* XSP: A light-weight C# web server.
* mod_mono: An apache module
that can host the Mono runtime and the ASP.NET runtime
** XSP
XSP is a simple web server written in C# that can be used to
run your ASP.NET applications. The code is available from our
download page or from the Anonymous CVS repository (module name:
xsp)/.
This is where initial development of the .aspx/.ascx/.asax
compiler to C# took place. That compiler is now integrated in
System.Web classes mostly under System.Web.Compilation
namespace. We added a new web server that works with mono and
MS runtime and is being used to debug our classes. It resides
in xsp/server.
A couple of classes of this new server can be reused/extended
to make an apache module/cgi using mono (MonoWorkerRequest and
MonoApplicationHost). This server also uses a couple of
plugins distributed with Mono to support gzip HTTP transfers.
There is also a set of .aspx pages to test the server along with
a few user controls under xsp/test.
You can check it out from CVS and run 'make install' to test it.
* mod_mono
This Apache module available at ApacheWorld.org
hosts the Mono runtime and the Mono's ASP.NET runtime, and
allows apache to server asp.net web pages.
Work is underway to improve it.
** Controls
A lot of work has been put in the various classes that
implement the controls (UI.HtmlControls and UI.WebControls),
but they have been coded mostly in the dark, and without being
able to test them in real life: Gaurav and Leen worked very
hard on this namespace.
We can now render all HtmlControls and all WebControls.
Help in making the controls better is appreciated.
** ASP.NET and free controls.
We want to encourage developers to create open source controls
that can be used both on Mono's ASP.NET and Microsoft's ASP.NET.
** How to Help
Testing and fixing HtmlControls, WebControls and validators is an
easy way to help.
In the CVS module XSP you can find a small web server used for
testing and a directory containing sample aspx pages.
You have some documentation under doc directory and in the README
file of each directory. They explain how to test our System.Web.
Testing is really easy!
As the server also works with MS runtime, you can use it to check
what the expected results are.