On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 5:25 PM, jmalcolm <[email protected]> wrote: > > Mike Christensen-2 wrote: >> >> Are the iOS and Android Mono Frameworks that Xamarin is creating a >> totally different code-base from MonoTouch and MonoDroid? What has >> become of the formerly Novell owned MonoTouch/Droid products? Are >> those just being scrapped completely? >> >> If these are going to be totally new products, will they be designed >> similar to the Novell products (eg, will it be easy to port from the >> Novell platform).. >> > > Attachmate owns MonoTouch and Mono for Android. We do not know what they > plan to do with them (but they have no Mono team now). I doubt they will > just hand them over to Xamarin. Time will tell. > > Xamarin has said that they will create new versions of these products with > something appearing in 3-4 months. So, I would expect perhaps six months for > a real product. According to Miguel, the Xamarin products will be API > compatible which just makes sense. > > Basically, you can use the Attachmate stuff today with the intent to replace > it with Xamarin products when they are ready. > > It is a little unclear to me what Xamarin needs to re-write and what they do > not. For example, a good chunk of MonoTouch was common with MonoMac (which > is open source). All this common code is available on GitHub as the MacCore > project under the MIT/X11 license. I see no reason why Xamarin could not use > it. > > I think a big part of the engineering effort for MonoTouch was the full AOT > (Ahead of Time) compilation and the selective linker. Most of that is in > Mono proper I imagine and so should also be available to Xamarin. The LLVM > integration to optimize the native code on iOS is also out in the open. > > A lot of the changes would be in MonoDevelop as well, which is also Open > Source. I would think much of the work to support XCode4 integration would > be in the IDE for example. Work to support intellisense for MonoTouch and > Mono for Android would largely be in the IDE as well. Code to integrate the > device simulators would be too. Basically, every time I think about it, I > think of more stuff they could use. There is also all the Sliverlight on > Android stuff they were doing... > > Anyway, the point is that Xamarin cannot just use MonoTouch or Mono for > Android but, despite this, they probably do not really need to write those > products fully from scratch either. It must sure help to have all the > knowledge required and the ability to just use the fully designed API on > each platform.
Great info! Thanks.. As far as what becomes of MonoTouch (though it seems like most of the /real/ work is part of the open source dependencies) is up to Attachmate.. However, I could see three possible scenarios: 1) Attachmate just abandons the MonoTouch code (if they're mean) 2) Attachmate open-sources the whole thing (if they're nice) 3) Attachmate sells the IP to Xamian for cheap (if such a deal could be worked out).. I'm very glad to see the Mono guys are still all together - starting a new company was an awesome idea, I'm definitely a bit jealous.. If I had some money I'd want to help fund this effort.. Mike _______________________________________________ Mono-list maillist - [email protected] http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-list
