Mono 1.2 release with thoughts from Miguel de Icaza

Posted by James Vastbinder on Nov 14, 2006

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Last week Mono hit its 1.2 release.  Novell uses Mono in server form for both ZenWorks and iFolder in its Suse Linux Enterprise 10 platform.  This release was primarily focused on performance and scalability improvements.  Enhancements can be found across the board in support for Windows Forms and System.Drawing, .NET 2.0 parity in C#, and debugger support for both X86 and X64.

With this release, we've solved an important issue by making it easier to translate the Microsoft user interfaces to Linux, an important contribution in increasing the number of client-side Linux applications,” said Miguel de Icaza, vice president of developer platforms at Novell and maintainer of the Mono project. “Now feature complete, Mono has matured to the point that we believe the migration from ASP.NET and Windows Forms to Linux is easier than ever before and gives developers access to all the added benefits of Linux.

InfoQ spoke to Miguel to find out more about the release.  On what's new in 1.2, Miguel explained:

Windows.Forms 1.2, complete System.Drawing, much higher performance, ports to many new architectures, generics, C# 2.0 and preview for a lot of the 2.0 APIs.  Full details are here:  http://www.go-mono.com/archive/1.2/

On interesting uses of mono around the net:

Unity (www.unity3d.com), wiki.com (the engine behind the DekiWiki in Wiki.Com), http://www.govtrack.us/ (tracking the US congress) and of course our own applications Beagle (http://beagle-project.org/Main_Page), F-Spot (f-spot.org) and Banshee
(http://banshee-project.org/Discover/Home)

Asked about the impact of the Novell-MS announcement, Miguel answered that it's too soon to tell (it just happened last week), but "at least a big part of our agreement (Office XML support) is being done with Mono."

Development is now shifting towards Mono 2.0, code name “Sirloin”.  The planned featureset inclues:

Mono 2.0: Core

• .NET 2.0 API support
• Compact GC
• More performance and scalability improvements
• MonoDevelop including debugger support
• MacOS X and X-Code support improvements
• Support for WCF (codenamed Olive)

Gtk#

• Databinding support
• .NET binding for Gnome APIs

Languages:

• VB Compiler
• C# Generics support
• GCC-based Compilers

Thanks Miguel and congratulations to the entire Mono team on a succesful release!

1. Back to top

   Java and Mono both under GPL?

   by Cameron Purdy

   Two sides to the coin:
   
   - With Java GPL'd, maybe Mono finally gets a decent VM
   
   - With Java GPL'd, there is no reason to keep Mono
   
   Peace,
   
   Cameron Purdy
   Tangosol Coherence: Distributed Caching for Java and .NET

   Reply

2. Back to top

   Re: Java and Mono both under GPL?

   by paul browne

   I'd have to disagree with Cameron - there are lots of GPL Languages already , and nobody ever suggested that GNU version of C or C++ was going to disappear when Mono appeared under the GPL.
   
   As a Java Developer , I'm looking forward to some of the 'Mashups' that will now (technically and Legally) be possible between the languages. Top of my wishlist would be a version of C# that runs within the JVM (a bit like JRuby does). C# and Java are already syntactically close, and that would reduce the cost of switching back and forward even further.
   
   Paul, Technology in Plain English

   Reply