[DotGNU]Portable.NET focus for the next 2 months

[Rhys Weatherley]

Well, I'm just about at the end of my self-imposed "vacation",
so I thought I'd drop everyone a line as to what I'll be doing
over the next 2 months with Portable.NET, and to point out
some areas where others can help.

My primary focus is the C# compiler: it needs to get to the
point where it can self-compile pnetlib so that we can break
the Windows dependencies once and for all.  Bradley Kuhn of
the FSF is also investigating what it will take to put a Java
front-end on the compiler so we can compile Java to IL.

My secondary focus will be the runtime engine and, drumroll
please, the x86 JIT.  Yes, I've finally decided to bite the
bullet and throw myself into it.  I've been performing some
experiments recently with treecc: I should be able to use
the node management capabilities of treec to do most of
the heavy-lifting in the JIT, which will simplify things greatly.
It will also simplify the process of porting the JIT to CPU's
other than x86.

I'm thinking of using a combination of Kaffe's three-address
intermediate code form, and Intel ORP's register allocation
policies in the JIT.  I'm confident that this will produce fairly
slick code.  But, other opinions are always welcome.

The one area that I probably won't be able to do much on
is pnetlib, so volunteers are needed.  Gopal V and Andrew
Mitchell have been working on a class status page that
will automatically show the current state of pnetlib, and
the list of things still to be done.  Hopefully this will be up
on the DotGNU Web site shortly.  Pick a class.  Any class.

I also need testers to bang on the engine, compiler, and
pnetlib.  There are the beginnings of a unit test framework
in place, but I need people to help fill in the gaps.

Cheers,

Rhys.