[DotGNU]New developer questions (was: This Year in DotGNU 2002 (DRAFT))

[Gopal V]

If memory serves me right, Bob Calco wrote:
> I've been lurking in the background on the mailing list a few days, and
> learning the TreeCC utility. I'm interested in joining the DotGNU project,
> particularly in the area of porting languages, foundation code, and .NET
> interoperability.

TreeCC is currently being revamped to support more language output models..
Peter Minten's latest addition viz Ruby output has been the last language
added ... 

> I love building tools and reusable libraries.

WOW !! ...  

> What are the steps to becoming a regular developer and/or team lead on this
> project? 

To work under the Portable.Net project which covers the umbrella of .NET
runtime, language compilers and TreeCC you first have to get approved by
Rhys for CVS access .... Which obviously needs about 4-5 good patches to 
some part .... (the debugger ?) ...  

Being a team leader needs your own project which has to be a GNU project
and approved by DotGNU Steering Committe . This means a small time period
to get all the members together and vote ... Not usually a good idea unless
you have something really big planned ... IMHO fragmentation can be really
really bad.

> Another question I had is the relationship of this project, if any,
> to Mono?

DotGNU Portable.Net is similar to the Mono project . So visit 
http://www.southern-storm.com.au/pnet_faq.html#q9_2 or doc/pnet_faq.html
in pnet CVS .

We share a certain amount of code ... Portable.Net's I18n code has been
relicensed to Mono on request . It is not a typical fork and is kept in
sync IIRC (which is easy since those 50k lines are mostly autogenerated).
And our runtime uses a header file from Mono JIT which simplifies x86 code 
generation.

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