Mono v1.0 has just been released; it is available for download from the Mono home page at www.go-mono.com. Next month, I will have details. This month, I will discuss the Mono betas a bit, and also the latest Portable.NET version 0.6.6 release.

Mono 1.0 Getting Set to Go
The first beta release of Mono included support for the GAC (Global Access Cache), which was a new feature that introduced new issues (bugs), especially on non-Intel platforms. Because most, but not all, of these were fixed in beta 2, the Mono team squeezed in a third beta on 6/15 and a release candidate on 6/25, before freezing the code for 1.0. The extra test releases should ensure clean installs on all platforms.

The second beta included a large number of changes in almost every part of Mono, including security auditing for many classes and improvements in System.Drawing. System.Windows.Forms (SWF) is making real progress. All known critical compiler bugs have been fixed, the compiler uses less memory, and register usage has improved, especially for 64-bit x86 CPUs. Bugs in Thread.Abort were fixed, and Runtime.Remoting now passes all regression tests. Jscript and VB.NET support has improved, and the new IKVM Java runtime is now included. Sessions in Web services were improved and System.Data is faster. In contrast, the third beta and release candidate included few changes, mostly correcting install issues for different platforms.

The Mono roadmap is being updated, mainly due to stable .NET 2.0 standards being delayed past the still scheduled year-end release of Mono 1.2. I will give more details after the roadmap changes are complete and agreed upon. The 1.2 release will include SWF, a VB compiler, and a C# 2.0 compiler (without the full 2.0 libraries). Mono will also attempt to include the new .NET 2.0 controls for SWF, ASP.NET 2.0, and additions to System.Xml; keep in mind that this is what is being discussed, not a final list.

Mac Mania and Cocoa#
The Mono team has always targeted Mac and PPC as one of the supported platforms, but until last year there weren't enough Mac users active in the Mono project for testing and fixing the libraries or keeping the Mac code line up to date with the x86 version of the code. That has changed; Mono beta 2 has improved support for Power 4 CPUs, better PPC code generation, and bug fixes in the IO-layer. Mac OS X support is good enough to run large applications such as MonoDevelop.

There is now a project, Cocoa#, being hosted on the Novell Forge site that has C# binding for the Mac Cocoa graphics system. This will allow programs to be targeted directly at the Mac using C# and other .NET classes. It is also a great opportunity for Mac programmers of all levels to get involved with Mono and .NET on the Mac. For project details, check out forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/?cocoa-sharp. To see some screen shots, look at Miguel's blog at primates.ximian.com/~miguel for 6/15, and while you are there, note the rumor on 6/25 that Microsoft had a demo at LinuxDays where they created a Web service on Windows using Visual Studio, then deployed it on Linux using Mono. The demo was apparently done by a local Microsoft office, and did not make any new Microsoft strategy.

Information on getting started with Mono on the Mac is at homepage.mac.com/griffincaprio/mono/RunningMonoOnMacOSX.html.

Portable.NET Releases 0.6.6
It has been two and a half months since the 0.6.4 release of Portable.NET, and the long list of improvements reflects that: dotgnu.org/pipermail/developers/2004-May/012299.html. The biggest improvements were in threading, serialization, and System.XML. This is a major milestone for Portable.NET because it was done with minimum involvement of Rhys, who spent much of this time working on libjit (a generic compiler back end, see my previous two columns or www.southern-storm.com.au/libjit.html for more information). This shows Portable.NET maturing into a true community. Rhys will be working more with Portable.NET again, especially with getting the runtime engine to support libjit.

Odds and Ends
An open source parser for VB.NET has been started on GotDotNet at Click Here. It is under an X11 type license that allows commercial use, and does not require that changes and derivatives be open sourced.

Mono has now been tested against the Microsoft Tutorials at Click Here, and runs all but the threading, unsafe, and OLE DB tutorials; these bugs are being corrected.