A new release of DotGNU Portable.NET is out – the new .6.12 version includes a large number of fixes for WinForms and XML, and some preliminary performance increases for PowerPC platforms. Download the source or ready to run packages from GetDotGNU.com or read detailed release notes.
Portable.NET 0.6.12 released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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The only thing that’s PPC specific in the change log is the fix for the PPC cache flush logic, and the start of work on something called the unroller.
No mention of anything else that could give speed increases. Will try this out once they release an OS X package.
Viro, that “something called the unroller” *is* the thing we talk about here. An unroller is (simply speaking) a mixture of a JIT and an interpreter.
E.g. the unroller will JIT the easy parts and interpret the difficult ones, see: http://t3.dotgnu.info/code/pnet-engine-2.jpg
Compared to a simple interpreter, an unroller gives a rather huge speed increase in many cases without the disadvantages of a JIT-only engine (besides the fact that a JIT is more like an all-or-nothing approach and an unroller can be built and used in the engine step by step)
This runs great under Portable.NET 0.6.10, ill try 0.6.12 once a Windows build is out…
Cool, so the unroller is something like the Java HotSpot VM, a runtime that performs adaptive compilation.
One of my favorite Windows apps is NoteLens, which runs on the .NET framework under Windows. With Portable.NET, will I be able to run NoteLens under Linux? And if so, can someone point me to the steps that I need to take?
Pardon my ignorance.
It gives you a .NET compatible (to a certain extent) runtime on Linux. I don’t know how complete the .NET support is and whether your app will run. Why not just try and see?
Forgive my ignorance, but how does this differ from Mono?
Link to the Mono FAQ : What are the differences between Mono and Portable.NET?
http://www.mono-project.com/about/technical.html#pnpproject
The FAQ on the mono site is just spreading FUD about Portable.NET. Some things are true, some are partly true and some are totally wrong, so it’s certainly not a good source of information.
You should try both projects before you decide and not rely on the FAQ of either.
Depending on the Windows Forms support, it may work. Otherwise, you might like to try notemeister:
http://notemeister.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
If there are errors or omissions in our FAQ that you
consider to be factually incorrect, please let us know,
and we will update the FAQ to reflect that.
The Mono FAQ is likely old, for example we support most
of C# 2.0 at this point and our VM has generics support,
so it is a good chance to update it.
Also we have done a lot towards performance tuning and
added various ports and 64-bit support in the meantime.
Miguel.
Come on, you can’t be serious…the mono FAQ says “…describe what is unique about Mono:”
# A self-hosting C# compiler written in C#, which is clean, easy to maintain.
# Focus on the .NET Framework: we are tracking down the .NET Framework API definition, as we believe it is the API people will be most familiar with.
# Supports Linux, BSD, MacOS, Windows and Solaris at this point.
# We have a great community of developers, without which Mono would not be possible.
What’s “unique” about those 4 items? Portable.NET is known to run on a lot more platforms than the mentioned ones, pnet’s compiler is also clean and easy to maintain, pnetlib is also tracking down the .NET Framework APIs and what makes you think DotGNU doesn’t have a “great community of developers”?
I am not really here to argue about this, but those items in the FAQ made me not take it too serious, it’s subjective to call them either “wrong” or “strangely verbalized” IMHO…
I still enjoy using both, mono and pnet, but those things are somewhat confusing…
Hello,
We can certainly revisit those items, but here are some
comments:
* I think its a plus that our compiler is written in C#
as it has lowered the barrier of entry for newcomers, and
is also at this point more complete (flow analysis is still
missing in Pnet for 1.0 support; our compiler flags more
incorrect pieces of code and produces more warnings than
the pnet compiler; and we are almost done with C# 2.0
support. We believe that this is a strength of havin
used C# for our compiler.
* We will fix the comment on the API, I forget why we
had that one there.
* We probably should say that our JIT engine supports
those platforms, not just that we support them (we also
support other platforms with the interpreter).
So we will clarify that our strength is on running code
fast.
* The community of developers of Mono is just larger and
is more active than the pnet one, we will reword that.
Thanks for your feedback.
Miguel.
With Portable.NET, will I be able to run NoteLens under Linux?
Not yet, the System.Windows.Forms support is not complete enough (I just tried it), and also it uses COM to communicate with Outlook. If Portable.NET readies more parts of SWF and NoteLens is somewhat redesigned, it will certainly be possible