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Mono Weekly News (January 22, 2003)

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The voice of the Mono Community.

Table of contents

  • 1. Headlines
    • 1.1 Mono 0.19 released
    • 1.2 Gtk# 0.7 released
    • 1.3 Mono 0.18 released
    • 1.4 DB2 System.Data client contributed
    • 1.5 MacOS X support on the runtime
    • 1.6 IKVM (a Java VM for .NET) runs with
      Mono
    • 1.7 Gsirc is making great process
    • 1.8 Mono Debugger released!
  • 2. Meet the team. This week Atsushi
    Enomoto

  • 3. CVS Activity
  • 4. Mailing List Activity

1.1 Mono 0.19 released

Yes!, this week we are having two Mono releases. The main reasons
for it is the 0.19 release were a lot of improvement in the
availability. Now Mono is packaged for the most important Linux
distributions. You can also get it through its own Red Carpet channel.
Better Remoting support (we now have the BinaryFormatter thanks to
Lluis), System.Web.Mobile to support Mobile browsing among others.

1.2 Gtk# 0.7 released

The Gtk#
team has provided us with a new release too. The changes since 0.6
are: the tutorial samples and monkeyguide docs spun off into
separate project. Build System fixes/enhancements, Metadata
parameter fixes, GStreamer fixes, Threading enhancements, GType
registration framework, libglade field binding enhancements,
Gdk.Drawable and Pango.Layout customizations, and Parser bugfixing.

1.3 Mono 0.18 released

The Mono team is proud to release Mono 0.18, with plenty of bug
fixes and improvements. If you are a happy 0.17 user, this release
is a happiness extension release. Many bugs in the runtime, class
libraries and C# compiler have been fixed. Some pills: we have many
improvements to the Mono VB.NET compiler. Authentication system in
ASP.NET. And the remoting infrastructure has got a big boost from
Lluis in this release.

1.4 DB2 System.Data client contributed

Christopher Bockner has contributed a DB2 System.Data client. We
have a very complete range of data providers.

1.5 MacOS X support on the runtime

MacOS X support on the runtime has been integrated into the
distribution, and MCS works with it. Running most tests works too.
Anyone with a MacOSX system is welcome to try the code, report bugs
and other issues and, hopefully, send patches:-)

1.6 IKVM (a Java VM for .NET) runs with Mono

Zoltan has managed to get IKVM (a Java VM for
.NET) to run with Mono. The HelloWorld.class runs with the Mono
runtime.

1.7 Gsirc is making great progress

Gsirc is Alp’s lightweight and flexible IRC client for the .NET
framework. It makes use of Gtk# and is known to run on Linux and on
Windows. It features a handy full-screen mode (Flotilla) which is
great for tracking dozens of IRC channels on a dedicated X terminal
or display. You can see it in action here
and get it at Gsirc’s
site.

1.8 Mono Debugger released!

The Mono Debugger 0.2.0 “Boston” has been released. After almost
half a year of hacking, we finally have a first public release of
the Mono Debugger :-). The source code is available at
this address. This release depends on Mono 0.19 so if you are
using an older version, update!.

2. Meet the team. This week Atsushi Enomoto

The Mono team is integrated by contributors all over the world that
are working really hard to get this project going further. In this
section we will be meeting this people so we can know more about
them and what they are doing.

This week we are proud to present Atsushi Enomoto.
Atsushi is a newcomer to the Free Software comunity. He is a
software engineer working at a certain venture company for about 2
or 3 years. Sometimes he uses dotnet with his job. The company he
works for has many XML business, but as for him, he has never met
few scene to handle XML. Once upon a time, he enjoyed MIDI
programming when not working. He also likes to translate XML
related materials into Japanese. His recent concern is about
cyberlaw, like what professor Lawrence Lessig teaches since he was
a law student studying criminal law and intellectual property laws.
Let’s see what are his interests in Mono and how is he contributing
to make the project achieve its goals.

Interview with Atsushi Enomoto

MWN: You are new to the Free Software community. How do
you feel about it?. Are you enjoying it?.

Atsushi Enomoto: I’m quite enjoying participating.
I’m too new to distinguish whether it is because of “Free Software”
development from simply hobby development but I think it is
precious experience to know how open software development
goes.
MWN: Why did you come to Mono?. What are the reasons
that moved you to choose it as the first OpenSource project to
contribute to?.

Atshushi Enomoto: Well… I had been interested in
Mono as the alternative dotnet project. I hadn’t ever used Mono
(and still I haven’t wrote any application!), but subscribed to
mono-list as a read-only member. The first time I got involved in
this project was when Miguel wanted a little patch for XML library.
Then I was interested in XML and looked into that code and found
that it was not written in fact. Then I wrote first, very easy code
and sent to him. It was too incomplete and had very entry-level
mistake. Miguel advised me to write test. I was in trouble with
test, and sent him I may go to #mono and ask. I solved it myself,
but after a few days, Miguel sent me “feel free to come anytime,”
so then I thought I had better (heh, I really thought “had better”)
go and see him to thank. After that I received another help-wanted
mail from duncan. I wrote buggy code 😉 again and sent him. Then
Miguel asked me if I could write more missing bits, then I started
to get more involved into this project. But I hadn’t thought that
means “as a maintainer”! I was really surprised when I found that I
was written about me as a “maintainer”, though it is no
problem.
MWN: So as one of the mono developers in the System.XML
namespaces (one of the basis parts of .net), what do you think
about the implementation you are doing?. What are the main benefits
you think Mono is bringing to Linux and the UNIX world with
it?

Atsushi Enomoto: Before I got involved in this, I
had thought the important part such as XML must be more complete
and ready-to-use, because there are similar packages such as
libxml, libxslt and soup. In fact, it is not such stage. Then I
think it should go ahead. You must surprise if I say that I hadn’t
ever used dotnet XML library so deeply, and moreover, I hadn’t ever
used libxml/libxslt. (I always use Java parser such as xerces, or
crimson. I’m not kind of linux developer.). There are many features
to finish. DTD (even though it is legacy), XSLT, XML Schema, XML
(de)serialization… I think I cannot do everything by myself (I
think I’m no more than basic-skilled programmer in the world).
About benefits of Mono, I think this project can provide
alternatives of Microsoft. I don’t think that mono’s value is
simply because it can run on unix, because MS really provide Rotor.
I think mono is valuable because it is “free software.” As for
Microsoft, they certainly cannot provide some of the software we
need, such that collaborates with GPLed software (it is only for
example). It is social reason, but not laughable. It is important
that dotnet’s useful feature such as ASP.NET can be used in
platform other than Windows. XML is important again is this context
… xml based web services.
MWN: Do you think the way .NET handles XML and the
related technologies is as good as it promises?. What can you tell
us about it, as a Java programer?.

Atshushi Enomoto: Well, first to say, my Java
experience is not so deep. I’m really enter-level developer. As for
So-called Web Services, Microsoft is certainly playing one of the
leader’s role, with many “standards” such as XML Schema, WS-I and
even dotnet itself. But I think it is not because they are with
standards. I’m suspicious of those effect of “standards” beleived
that “because it is standard.” I think technology is used because
it is good (I think that Miguel is of good sense because he knows
“what is valuable” and what is not). So I think that if we use web
services, then we should always think “it is extending freedom” or
not. To tell the truth, I’m so new to mono, and to System.Xml. So I
only know about core feature of System.Xml namespace. Many programs
such as monodoc, ADO.NET, XML signature, or other libraries uses
this feature. I think this package itself is, however, far more
complete. Formerly, there were great implementor of this namespace,
but now we need more help. I think that many developers (like me)
can participate to this feature. XML is not so difficult. I can’t
say anything about other tools, but I think it is important to get
compatible with other implementations, such as DotGNU and of
course, Microsoft FCL. Such effort makes ourselves “easy to
use.”
MWN: Is there anything left you may want to say about
which classes or tools you find prioritary to implement so people
reading this could contribute?

Atsushi Enomoto: Humm… the easiest way is to
write applications. It is OK to try existing programs …heh, but
even for myself I didn’t yet 😉 .I want anyone who help development
of this package such as XSLT, but there is no loadmap, so
contributors (even for myself) must be confused. As said below, I
didn’t know that I was regarded one of the maintainers. Then I’ll
write some of the draft of the plan.
MWN: Thanks Atsushi. We are happy to see how
developers from the Microsoft Windows environment come to Linux and
to Mono and contribute to this project. Thanks for your time and
your work.

3. CVS Activity

This has been a busy week. Here are the results. (*) Actually I am
using the number of commits as measure, I will try to get more
accurate aproximations in the future. (Starting Jan 10th, till Jan
20th)

Authors: Total 28

Author Commits
Ajay Kumar Dwivedi 1
Alejandro Sanchez 65
Alp Toker 1
Atsushi Enomoto 7
Christopher Bockner 3
Daniel Lopez 6
Daniel Morgan 10
Dietmar Maurer 14
Duncan Mak 36
Gaurav Vaish 12
Gonzalo Paniagua 43
Jackson Harper 5
Jeroen Janssen 4
Johannes Roith 84
Jonathan Pryor 29
Lluis Sanchez 5
Marco Ridoni 4
Martin Baulig 218
Miguel de Icaza 42
Mike Kestner 1
Nick Drochak 9
Paolo Molaro 14
Patrik Torstensson 3
Peter Williams 7
Rafael Teixeira 5
Rodrigo Moya 11
Sebastien Pouliot 18
Ville Palo 12
Zoltan Varga 6

Modules Commits
mono 43
mono/doc 15
mono/jit 14
mcs/mcs 12
mcs/class 118
mcs/class/corlib 34
mcs/class/System.Web 25
debugger 211
gtk-sharp 37
mbas 5
monodoc 41
mod_mono 8
xsp 7

4. Mailing List Activity

This has been a quite week in the Mono list. You can see the
scrollbar in your Evolution mailbox
without forcing your eyes!. The main points:

  • Daniel Morgan has had very busy days contributing a lot to the
    list. Some of the useful information he provided was about SQL#. We
    now know that: SQL# For GTK# will be moved to its own cvs module
    sqlsharpgtk, some of the data binding functionality could be moved
    to a base class so other GTK Widgets can take advantage of data
    binding. Please
    read     for more info.
  • A little bit of discussion about the array access
    performance.

Please visit us at the homepage of the Mono Project: http://www.go-mono.org

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