Microsoft licensing aside for a moment; does anybody have any success writing C# applications and moving the source-code across systems (Wintel, freeBSD Linux, Mac OS X ), just like Java?
Your best option at this point is Portable.NET. The last release, 0.6, is available as .dmg installer and provides an interpreted IL execution engine, C# compiler and tools and implementations of the Base Class Libraries of the CLI/CLR standards. It does not provide a JIT compiler but it is fast enough for general usage to develop/test components and console apps. Rotor has been patched for Panther, the details are here [1], the Rotor release is still maintained in the FreeBSD ports tree in lang/cli and runs on the 5.x series (I don't use the 4.x releases so I can not comment on that status). Mono is slowly getting OS X support in its build trees. A PowerPC JIT compiler is in the source trees and daily builds as well as on the must-have list for Mono 1.0, targeted for 1Q/1H2004. A roadmap for Mono is available at http://www.go-mono.com/mono-roadmap.html .
I've used all three on Jaguar and Panther. Rotor is the closest to the commercial implementation for Windows platforms, Portable.NET is stable, fairly quick and the most usable from *NIX users view but differs in its implementation compared to Rotor or Mono. Mono has more features and gets more attention and does/will provide a native PPC JIT compiler but is only now becoming usable on OS X.
One option to explore is writing in Java and compiling code for your client using the J# compiler and the Java Class Library implementations that are part of the Visual J# runtime add on for the .NET Framework. Finally, explore Jeroen Frijters most excellent IKVM project which compiles Java byte-code for execution on the CLR. His development weblog is here: http://weblog.ikvm.net/
[1] http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~ejalbert/archives/2003/11/03.html
Is Rotor a platform ready for the prime time, to just a toy (1.9 million lines for that) for academics to show cool compilers?
I would not classify it as a toy however it's performance is somewhat less than that of the .NET Framework commercial implementations. I've had success doing simple Platform Invoke wrappers for Cocoa AppKit Window Classes and writing native GUI applications for OS X/Aqua with C#/Rotor. At this point, licensing and/or perception of the license restrictions has not created a large community outside academic and language implementor circles.
Is there current on-going development in the area. Are books on C# apply to Rotor?
Check out: http://www.sscli.net/ for a community location for Rotor projects and O'Reilly has the one and only book thus far on Rotor, "Shared Source CLI Essentials".
Finally, does licensing totally prohibits commercial use of it, or there are some dues that can be paid to Microsoft for the use of it? I have Visual Studio .NET licenses.
Licensing of the last release is limited to noncommercial purposes but I suppose the CLR base dev or marketing team would not mind hearing from you. At PDC, Peter Drayton and James Bach both commented on Rotor being part of daily builds of the next version of the .NET Framework and discussed possible schedules for release of Rotor v2. Hopefully a a revised user license which allows commercial possibilities might emerge or a roadmap and plan that engages it's user community. MacTech Journal devoted it's cover this month to exploring the the CLI/CLR and the .NET Framework... everything else can seemingly compile and run on OS X. If OS X developers are starting to pay attention then change may yet come. Only my opinion and my hope...
Regards, Dave
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.morford.org/ "The purpose of computation is insight, not numbers."
=================================== This list is hosted by DevelopMentorŪ http://www.develop.com NEW! ASP.NET courses you may be interested in:
2 Days of ASP.NET, 29 Sept 2003, in Redmond http://www.develop.com/courses/2daspdotnet
Guerrilla ASP.NET, 13 Oct 2003, in Boston http://www.develop.com/courses/gaspdotnet
View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://discuss.develop.com
