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Microsoft Programming Ximian IT Technology

Mono 2.8 Released 78

Posted by timothy from the han-mono dept.
mallumax writes "A new veriosn of Mono(2.8) has been released: Mono has now integrated SourceGear's webservice enhancements, and there has been a lot of improvement in XML, serialization and web services. Other features are new thread locking and ahead-of-time compiler optimisations. Check out the Mono website for more details." Congratulations are in order for the Mono team as well -- SourceGear was their first customer.
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Mono 2.8 Released More

Mono 2.8 Released

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  • It was Mono 0.28, not 2.8 (Score:5, Informative)

    by mustapha ( 709 ) <<duncanmak> <at> <gmail.com>> on Sunday October 05, 2003 @03:42PM (#7138418)
    The version number is 0.28, not 2.8.

  • 0.28 (Score:1, Redundant)

    by theCoder ( 23772 )
    That should be Mono 0.28, not Mono 2.8.

    I almost thought the Mono devs were getting too close to Microsoft and started version inflating. Glad I RTFA :)
  • I have worked with Microsoft/C++/COM, Unix/C++, Java, ruby and C#/.net. My favorites are ruby and C#/.net and they compliment eachother so well.

    I think Mono is the most important open source project second only to linux, because it will make the most advanced software platform in existence available for free on unix and windows. It is also interesting that it is a useful tool for identifying those among us that are zealots and not software idealists. :-)
    • *the most advanced software platform in existence*

      It's just a VM and it exists because it's the only way MS could rescue themselves out of their leaky boat of an OS.

      Hanging on to the coat-tails gives it legitimacy, kind of like having Cytrix exist as a third source of x86 chips should Intel & AMD go bust.

      Your list of languages is hardly a broad base to make such a sweeping statement.

    • Re:Mono - the most important OS project currently (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kunta Kinte ( 323399 ) on Sunday October 05, 2003 @10:01PM (#7140662) Journal
      I have worked with Microsoft/C++/COM, Unix/C++, Java, ruby and C#/.net. My favorites are ruby and C#/.net and they compliment eachother so well.

      Congratulations.

      My favorites are ruby and C#/.net and they compliment eachother so well.

      I'm curious, care to explain how these languages compliment each other??

      I think Mono is the most important open source project second only to linux, because it will make the most advanced software platform in existence available for free on unix and windows.

      Saying .NET is the most advance software platform in existence does not magically make it so. I can come after and say "no, you wrong, Java is the most advance platform", and we would have gotten absolutely nowhere.

      I disagree with your assertion, by the way. And I have a few hundred JSRs at JCP.org [jcp.org] to back me up.

      Most of Java's development is done in the open. Which means tool developers have a heads up on what changes are coming and even have a say in it too boot.

      It is also interesting that it is a useful tool for identifying those among us that are zealots and not software idealists. :-)

      (i)I don't think that Mono makes much sense currently because it's a implementation of a development platform specifically designed to increase Microsoft's market share at the expense of everyone else.

      (ii)Because Mono does not have any say in the spec it is implementing *and* the writer of the spec is historically hostile.

      If that makes me some type of "zealot", I'll accept my title :)

      • Up until 1.5, Java lacked some rather significant modern features -- the biggest one of which was typed generics.
        • Unfortunatly Java 1.5s generics are not typed. They are not "templates" which wold be typed ... but just syntactic sugar with build in casts ... generics are wrappers of java.lang.Objects, nothing more.

          E.G.:

          Vector<String> sv = new Vector<String>();
          Vector v = sv;
          Vector<Integer> iv = v; // not sure about that and to lazy to fire up my IDE
          iv = (Vector<Integer>)sv; // WORKS!! but crashes later

          That above is legal ... because in fact the compiler treats it like this:

          Vector<Object

          • The information is still in the class files, and the system could well eliminate the casts by using this information as part of a verification step.

            As well as this, combined with unboxing - as Integer et al are final classes (and thus can't be extended) - the JVM could transparently replace Integer with a template style version.

            The implementation makes these details fully recoverable from bytecode.

            (Note, it's not perfect, as you might find that this gets passed to some 1.5 era code that knows nothing abo
            • If teh system was a "template" based system, yes. But it is not. The system is like I described above, and sadly its wanted to be like that.
              angel'o'sphere
              • I know it's not template based.... I still think you could achieve a fairly easy optimisation by generating some of this stuff dynamically.

                If the bytecode looks like this

                invokevirtual ArrayList::get()
                checkcast Integer

                then you can see this later on and shortcircuit the cast.

                If the code looked like

                invokevirtual ArrayList::get()
                checkcast Integer
                invokevirtual Integer::intValue

                then it's fairly obvious you could eliminate this.

                It is a LOT more work than a template based system, but you can be sure that if

    • Re:Mono - the most important OS project currently (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ekuns ( 695444 ) * on Monday October 06, 2003 @12:50AM (#7141475) Journal

      most advanced software platform in existence

      OK, I'll bite. :) Most advanced platform in existence? Isn't that a bit lofty? C#/.Net can be described, accurately, as Microsoft's answer to J2EE. While I'm a pragmatist about this and I find things to admire and things to dislike about both platforms, history still favors J2EE as the better platform.

      If Java were just Sun, then .NET would probably quickly become a superior platform. I hate to say this. I like Sun, I dislike Microsoft. But I have to be honest with what I see. However, Java is not just Sun. There is a huge array of open source software for Java. Just tour the Apache [apache.org] software web site and the enormous variety of Java software available so developers don't have to reinvent the wheel.

      Microsoft is often better at making software easier to use. They are often better at making software to make making GUI's easy. They are often better at making certain kinds of tools and certain kinds of integration between products.

      But to those who think that Open Source is all about copying what others innovate (I'm not accusing anyone in this discussion of that), there are a great many J2SE and J2EE projects out there that disprove that straw man. (I don't know enought about J2ME to speak intelligently.)

      In addition to Apache, check out Exolab [exolab.org]. These are just a couple of the organizations creating open source J2SE and J2EE solutions. The existence of these sorts of organizations, these projects, brings great power and maturity to Java that .NET doesn't yet have.

      I'm learning .NET stuff because I'm pragmatic and there are indeed some very nice features it has. One is the ability to link many languages in a native way rather than having to go through JNI. (shudder)

      All of this to say that I have to question not only calling any software platform the "most advanced software platform in existence," but especially the .NET platform which has not yet caught up to J2EE in functionality. Not for web projects at any rate.

      • I agree that C#/.Net is not the most advanced platform. BUT, I don't think it is just another fad. I can search countless websites with information on how to use C#. I feel it has cleaned up a lot of the nastiness of Java. It is not the perfect language (That would be PERL ;) )but I find it very EASY to use and understand. My father-in-law, who only programmed in C before has picked up C# and is really enjoying it.

        There may be issues with microsoft calling and saying all C# derivatives are ours. I
        • But don't you realize this is a pipe dream?

          Lets look at MS's implementations of .NET. We have System.Windows.Forms, which is a THING wrapper over win32 calls, it even lets you manipulate the HWND.

          How about MS's .NET 3d environment? IT's DirectX calls all exposed through .NET.

          They are wrapping their existing products, nothing more. They are not creating a cross platform platform in any way shape or form.

          Look at their MS SQL data class, it's not native, it wraps the native MS SQL classes present in win32.

    • Re:Mono - the most important OS project currently (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I think Mono is the most important open source project second only to linux, because it will make the most advanced software platform in existence available for free on unix and windows.

      Bah.

      The GNU system is undoubtedly the most important open source/Free software project, bar none.

      Neither Linux nor Mono would exist without the tools created as part of that project. I mean, what do you use to build your Linux kernels?
    • at best, mono will be a never ending catch-up game... always having to tweak itself to stay MS compatible... plus, mono will need to be able to handle all the win32 api calls, so that means WINE needs a lot more development before it will be a formitable opponent to .net

      a native port would be huge, but Bill would never give Linux that much power... here is hoping Apple gets a native port of .net
    • Mono is a product pushed and financed by Microsoft. Mono is somehow their last line of defense, a marketing device and a legitimacy tool. C# and friends have not been able to take off as intended simply, hype aside, because it is not a practical tool to develop end user software (for in-house projects it does well it seems). C# is a work in progress, meaning core updates are coming for at least two or more product generations.

      What software designers want is a stable, un-quirky framework to develop applica

    • I think Mono is the most important open source project second only to linux, because it will make the most advanced software platform in existence available for free on unix and windows. It is also interesting that it is a useful tool for identifying those among us that are zealots and not software idealists. :-)

      "for free" is not important. Neither is "open source". Mono is free software. That gives you much more than just getting it for free, or getting the code. In fact, its not the fact of getting it f

  • My views on mono (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BortQ ( 468164 ) on Sunday October 05, 2003 @05:24PM (#7139091) Homepage Journal
    At first I thought of mono as a way of getting MS .NET applications to run under Linux. Now I see that this view is silly.

    Microsoft has built in a way to access the underlying Win32 API into .NET. Thus any .NET application that uses this functionality will never run under mono (except if wine can handle all the calls).

    But that doesn't mean that mono is useless, far from it. MS' .NET was clearly created as a competitor to the java virtual machine. Mono is just another competitor to java and MS .NET as well. And the most important point is that it is fully free.

    The open source communities have largely embraced java even though sun still imposes some restrictions through licensing. This has had a large negative effect on the spread of some java technologies (like JAI or java3D not being available on macOS).

    Mono gives the open source communities a 2nd generation virtual machine design to call it's own. Forget about microsoft's .NET, view mono as a solution in and of itself and it looks very interesting.

    • Re:My views on mono (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 05, 2003 @06:49PM (#7139660)
      Forget about microsoft's .NET, view mono as a solution in and of itself

      That is what Microsoft want$ you to do. Then in 5 years or so when their IP is firmly entrenched in the Gnome/Linux landscape, a swawm of laywers will decend to argue over who actually owns what. Mono is probably more dangerous to Linux than SCO.

      • lol, patents do not apply in countries where software patents are not allowed

        • Re:My views on mono (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          please note that this isnt miguel, it is just an ignorant person that cant get people to read his posts based on their content.

      • Then in 5 years or so when their IP is firmly entrenched in the Gnome/Linux landscape, a swawm of laywers will decend to argue over who actually owns what.

        Well, the worst they could do is force licensing fees to use Mono, or force the removal of that work from Linux. They couldn't use that to attack Linux itself unless somehow Mono became an integral aprt of the operating system itself.

        I mean, Mono running under Solaris or MacOS certainly wouldn't give Microsoft an in to destroying those platforms.

    • Re:My views on mono (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That being said, the question needs to be asked again: why?

      If the idea is to build a new VM from scratch, MS be damned, why ever should it be built around their specifications? Why ever should it use their uninspired Java clone as the standard language? Why not build on the existing attempts at a free Java environment (GCJ, ClassPath, etc.), or other original and truly free language/platforms like Python or Ruby?

      As it is, creating an almost-workalike of Microsoft's .NET does absolutely nothing for free
      • Why not build on the existing attempts at a free Java environment (GCJ, ClassPath, etc.), or other original and truly free language/platforms like Python or Ruby?

        there was no money to be made in doing that.

        It entrenches Microsoft's standards further

        hey, i like microsoft. clippy, passport and outlook are my favourite software

        the ONLY reason for mono to exist is to provide a 100%-compatible environment for running apps written to the Microsoft standard on non-Windows platforms

        nope, thats a job for w

      • Re:My views on mono (Score:3, Interesting)

        by BigGerman ( 541312 )
        that is a good point.
        I support Mono for several reasons:
        C# is a very good language
        Creating Windows(like) GUI in C# is a pleasure
        In a all-out struggle of good vs. evil it is wise to hedge the bets and Sun (and therefore Java) seems to be on decline right now.

        But having Ruby or Python grow up to be an alternative to .NET would have been much better choice.
        Ruby Application Server anyone?

        • That might happen still with parrot, Perl's new virtual machine which is register based instead of stack base (which I think .Net, Mono, and Java are, only a guess). It might in the future support other interpreted languages like python and tcl. It would really be a dream if it could support functional languages as well. This could provide the features of .Net language Independence without risking patent trouble with Mono. I can only dream of calling python code from lisp with functional interface, wheth
        • > C# is a very good language.

          If you're used to Visual C++ or Visual Basic, I suppose it is... in the same way that losing a finger is "very good" compared to losing an arm.

    • Re:My views on mono (Score:5, Funny)

      by aled ( 228417 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @12:04AM (#7141311)
      The open source communities have largely embraced java even though sun still imposes some restrictions through licensing. This has had a large negative effect on the spread of some java technologies (like JAI or java3D not being available on macOS).

      And .Mono will be much more open, yes! And it will we as widespread as, like, GNUStep, and the next version will be more stable and feature-wise than Java 1.4.2 (because it's a second generation and Java just fourth). And it will be more portable than J2me and more scalable than J2ee. And will bring peace and love to mankind.
      And when .Net and .Mono will meet .Net will say "I am your father...It is pointless to resist, my son". And .Mono will answer "I will not fight you, Father. I've got to save you.".

      "If you will not be turned. You will be destroyed. Young fool. Only now, at the end, do you understand." - Emperor to Luke

    • Re:My views on mono (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mshiltonj ( 220311 ) <mshiltonj@NoSPaM.gmail.com> on Monday October 06, 2003 @09:02AM (#7142869) Homepage Journal
      Mono is just another competitor to java and MS .NET as well. And the most important point is that it is fully free.

      It's only "fully free" until Microsoft sues because of the patent infringment. It's only a matter of time.

    • Re:My views on mono (Score:2, Insightful)

      by benpeter ( 699832 )
      .NET, [sarcasm] It's so cool how it's totally, fully interoperable with ALL windows XP AND windows 2003 server [/sarcasm] Microsoft again, trying to wedge proprietary into what shouldn't be to leverage market share.

    • Microsoft has built in a way to access the underlying Win32 API into .NET.

      As I understand it, only an application fully trusted by an administrator can P/Invoke native code such as raw Win32 APIs.

    • I had to laugh when you said Mono and .NET were 2nd generation virtual machines. Fashions in the software world come and go and come back again. People were experimenting with virtual machines before I was born (Close to 30 years). Hell you can even see this trend in VB. VB 1.0 ran under DOS and Windows. The DOS version actually compiled to machine code. Then MS bought up the company and refocused only on windows in interpreted mode. Yep versions 2 through 4 ran only as interpreted. It wasn't until
  • Mono seems to be written with threading that only works on Linux and Windows. If you see their release pages [go-mono.com], they only have Linux packages.

    Several days ago I posted a thread on mono-devel [ximian.com] about FreeBSD 4.8 not working and only got two replies - both confirming the problems. OSX seems to have the same basic problems.

    This is even for console (text) applications - they just won't run.

    Has anyone been able to get a working mono on FreeBSD 4.8 or 5.1? Can you tell us how?

  • Is Microsoft really behind .NET? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sanity ( 1431 ) * on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @04:53PM (#7156713) Homepage Journal
    I ask the question because as someone that had developed .NET software, the fact that Microsoft still requires users to download a 20MB runtime unless they already have .NET is absolutely the biggest reason not to develop for .NET. Microsoft could have addressed this by including .NET in XP by default, but they didn't.

    Unless Microsoft throws their full weight behind .NET it will have all the problems of Java with no advantages over it.

    • Microsoft could have addressed this by including .NET in XP by default, but they didn't.

      The .NET and XP beta periods overlapped substantially, if I recall correctly. There wasn't any way to get the completed runtime into the XP release.

      the fact that Microsoft still requires users to download a 20MB runtime unless they already have .NET is absolutely the biggest reason not to develop for .NET

      This is a bit misleading. It certainly applies if you are writing thick client (win32) applications. But it's irrel

      • Microsoft failed to put .NET in WinXP SP1 even though .NET was at that stage already version 1.0 (or even 1.1 - I'm not sure).

        I also have very similar concerns about how much Microsoft is behind some aspects of .NET. Consider that they were planning calling their next version of Windows .NET, but dropped this naming, partly because everyone is so confused as to what .NET is.
        • The point about WinXP SP1 has some validity, but given that SPs should fix bugs rather than add new functionality I'm generally in agreement with them on that. But I'm sure someone here will tell me that some old SPs had new functionality...

          Absolutely agree about the marketing cockup with naming. There was a time when .NET got confused with all kinds of unrelated or partly related crap (like passport) and for some bizarre reason they decided to call Windows CE 4.0 (or was it 4.1, anyway...) Windows CE.NET

  • at first I was stunned when I saw that it's up to version 2.8. But when I followed the link I saw the truth.

    It's at version 0.28. Somebody put the decimal in the wrong place! :-)

    Oh well, am just glad that it's still going strong!

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