Hi,
I'm sorry for crossposting to both the users and
developers list, but I think this is something that needs everyone's
attention.
In my opinion we urgently need to come up with a
strategy for implementing support for multiple runtimes, and for making tasks
runtime-aware. The release of the .NET Framework 1.1 is imminent, and
Mono is making good progress so the chance that projects need to build
assemblies for multiple runtimes is increasing.
I suggest that we create a RuntimeInfo class that
will have the following properties :
- Identifier (eg. NET-1.0,
Mono-1.0)
- Name (eg. Microsoft .NET
Framework)
- Version (eg.
1.0)
This class would also have properties or methods
for retrieving the framework directory (eg.
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.0.3705, this can be read from the
registry) and sdk directory (eg. C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
2003\SDK\v1.1) for the runtime which it represents and a method or bool for determining whether it's
available.
We could have strong-typed RuntimeCollection
class and the Project class would have two properties :
- SupportedRuntimes
(collection of RuntimeInfo classes)
- AvailableRuntimes
(collection of RuntilmeInfo classes that are available on the current
system)
The Project class could also have a method that
accepts a runtime indentifier and that will return bool indicating whether the
runtime is currently available on the system. The question is, when is a
runtime available ? When both it's framework directory (the directory
containing the assemblies) and the sdk directory are available (sdk is
installed) ?
The project class and element would also get a
new attribute for specifying the default runtime. If no default runtime
is provided, then the runtime under which is running is the
default.
On the task level (would this be implemented on
the base Task class or a new RuntimeAware task from which tasks that need to
be aware of the targeted runtime environment should derive ?) we would be
having a runtime attribute that accepts a runtime identifier. In no
runtime was explicitly specified on the task level, this property should
return the default runtime that was set on the Project level or the runtime in
which nant is running, if no default runtime was specified.
Th setter of this property would immediately
check if the specified runtime is supported and available, and throw a
buildexception otherwise. The base class for the runtime-aware tasks
would have method for retrieving the framework and sdk directories.
Which would return the directory for the runtime that was specified on the
task level, if it's supported and available. It would return the
information about the default runtime, if it was specified on the project
level. Or it will return the information of the runtime in which nant is
running, if no runtime was specified on the task level and no default runtime
was specified on the project level.
I'm just brainstorming a litle here (it's 6 am
here, so don't count on all this being very accurate), but I think we need to
get this discussion started (this and a good logging infrastructure need to
get attention urgently)
Miguel de Icaza (from the Mono project) is
willing to change the windows setup package for Mono to register it's
location(s) and version(s) in the registry, he just wants some help for
implementing it in the setup package. That would allow us to discover
the location and availability of both .NET Framework 1.0, .NET Framework 1.1,
.NET Compact Framework 1.1 and Mono runtimes without using hacks.
Just my 2 cents,
Gert
