Re: [DotGNU]Hello

[Gopal V]

If memory serves me right, DrDiettrich wrote:
> across the dotGNU project. I'm willing to assist in the development of a
> free version of .NET, and need some hints on what I can do.

Welcome to DotGNU...

DotGNU Portable.net is the actual foundation or core of the .NET support
components of dotgnu .. So I'd rather restrict my comments to that ..

> Perhaps my according experience with the .NET internals may be
> interesting in some projects? I designed this disassembler as a
> front-end for my general decompiler, which is one of my current lifetime
> projects.

Yes, that is interesting ... 

> My favorite programming environment is Delphi, but during the past 30
> years I've used many other languages. I hate C, but I can live with C++
> or C# as long as the code is OO and not high-level assembler spaghetti
> ;-)

Hmm... if you have seen Rhys's code you wouldn't say that ... Pnet engine
and the rest of it has a very very abstract API . I would go so far as to
say that we have used virtual functions for our ILCoder API (which is used
to plug'n'play JITs and interpreters).

But C# is good ... C# is enough so to say :)

> As to the legal aspects, I can assure that I've read nothing but the
> official documentation around .NET.

Cool, that was one of the other questions I had .

> Perhaps it's due to my age that I'm a bit confused about the projects
> and already available programs around dotGNU. My English also is far
> from perfect, but I'm working hard on all those deficiencies <gd&r>.
> Perhaps somebody can take my hand and direct me to a place where I can
> do something for dotGNU. Will I need Linux and make and gcc, or can I do
> something even without these?

To compile Portable.net you'll need make and gcc and as of now to test 
our new WinForms you'll need X11 based UI .. Linux "per se" is not needed.
Cygwin is sufficent to develop Portable.net , but you can build mingw32
binaries out of these as well.

^Tum is trying to make a VisualStudio build out of Pnet and will prolly
achieve that easly as all gcc specific code is in #ifdef __gcc__ . Though
that might cause a slow down in the runtime generated .

Generally speaking , there are a lot of openings on DotGNU, the most
neglected parts of Pnet right now are 

*) Jscript interpreter
*) Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll 

The former is written using TreeCC and it might be interesting to see 
how an interprter can be designed cleanly with Aspect Orientation .
And the latter is just filling the TODO's in pnetlib/Basic/*.cs . 

Both of them needs a champion, so it's your pick :)

> DoDi
> (Dr. Hans-Peter Diettrich, Flensburg, Germany)

If you run into any problems building, please tell the list or me .
I'd be glad to help (though timezones might delay a reply until I wake up)
but the rest of the list might know more about cygwin than me :)

Gopal
-- 
The difference between insanity and genius is measured by success