9 ms·

Mono and Roslyn

154 points by ot 13y ago

_random_ 13y ago
Keeps getting better. Let's hope there will be a single unified cross-platform .NET-Mono-Framework in future with native capabilities.
socialist_coder 13y ago
I hope Unity3d improves their C# environment soon (maybe Roslyn will make it easier for them?). The Monodevelop that comes with Unity 4.3 (latest) is pretty buggy.
- cwyers 13y ago
  MonoDevelop shouldn't be affected by this at all in the short term (although eventually MonoDevelop may get new features from this). The actual Mono runtime that comes with Unity isn't getting upgraded because of licensing issues, which as far as I can tell, is because you can't ship LGPL code on certain systems (I think the App Store license is incompatible with the LGPL, for starters).
  - uvTwitch 13y ago
    Is there any option whatsoever for Unity to use future versions of Mono, or does the GPL corruption in more recent versions mean that they're legally stuck with an outdated version?
    - cwyers 13y ago
      Unity has a license from Novell for an older version of the software, which is how they can use it in places they can't use the LGPL. Xamarin sells Mono under a commercial license, but Unity apparently doesn't want to pay what Xamarin is asking for a license to the updated code.
      - shadowmint 13y ago
        Which is sad because the massive unity code base is stuck in the C# dark ages. On the other hand, mono is 'open source' so it's kind of rubbish for Xamarin to be asking license fees when they have their own (pretty rubbish) competing game stack with monogame that they have a vested interest in (not commercially, but Xamarin developers work on it). I find this sort of 'kind of open source but actually you have to pay us ahahahahaa~' thing pretty distasteful.
        sanxiyn 13y ago
        What is distasteful about it? Unity is not open source. If Unity were open source, it could use Mono under LGPL, no problem.
        shadowmint 13y ago
        It's the 'I want a piece of your pie' thing, that I also find troubling with patents. Person A: Invents something, fails to capitalize on it. Person B: does marketing work, sells all the Monies! Person A: -__- Oh that was clever. Actually, I want some of your money please. Person B: Fuck off. <--- The correct response. If you make something and want to sell it, sell it. If you make something and give it away for free, don't come crying when someone else sells it. The 'dual license GPL' approach to software which is 'kind of free unless you sell it, in which case we'll negotiate some nice on going licensing fees' seems disingenuous to the spirit of open source (and specifically the GPL) to me.
        knocte 13y ago
        You clearly don't understand open source. Go do some reading and later come back here. Some tips: free doesn't mean "gratis", it comes from "freedom". Therefore it is normal that the GPL uses a strategy to avoid that derived works become proprietary ('proprietary' means: essentially "non-free" for the end-user, and "free" for the developer). From your comment it seems that you confuse the fact that opensource is not something that benefits the developer; it is something that benefits the end user! Don't forget that.
    - sanxiyn 13y ago
      Unity has an option. They can pay Xamarin. They don't want to. The end.
      - tkubacki 13y ago
        Nowadays if I needed scripting lang I would probably go with Dartlang: better license, not a clone, probably better perf, simple concurrent prog model and still syntax is familiar.
  - krisgee 13y ago
    Isn't Roslyn under Apache? Or am I misunderstanding the point here?
    - cwyers 13y ago
      Unity uses the Mono runtime. Roslyn is a compiler. Mono has its own compiler, actually, which is available under either the GPL or the MIT/X11 license. If having a non-LGPL compiler was sufficient for Unity, the MIT/X11 license for the Mono compiler would have already sufficed.
jnardiello 13y ago
Recently we have started using Mono for a huge project. We have a pure unix-based stack and everyone cringed at the idea of running a .net application on Unix but decided to give it a try. HUGE mistake. After a couple months of development we have (today) abandoned the project and decided to take a different direction. Mono isn't just reliable for production, as simple as that. It will inevitably have unstable and unpredictable behaviours, period. That said, it might still be good alternative for desktop local apps. Just make sure you save your work enough times during your workflow ;)
- rottyguy 13y ago
  can you elaborate more on the reliability please?
  - jnardiello 13y ago
    Well, by "unpredictable" i mean truly unpredictable. You can randomly get seg-faults with no stack trace nor log, 100% CPU sorted only by dirty tricks that totally out of question in production-like environments, etc.. Most of the problems weren't caused by mono alone nor by the app alone. The really buggy behaviors came out with the interaction of the two.
    - rottyguy 13y ago
      was hoping to hear something more concrete and what you had to do to resolve it (also what finally broke the camel's back to decide to walk away). I realize it could involve a bit of verbage but given the interest in .net openness these days, some real world scrutiny would be beneficial to us interested observers.
    - giulianob 13y ago
      What type of app were you running? Website or regular app? Also what version of Mono were you using? I have been running my server app for a few months now on 3.x and had some issues. For example, the default threadpool size is too small, the default implementation of FastCGI on Mono is super slow (there are alternatives out), and the GC behaves a bit differently (nursery size and collection schedule is different). I did have to learn more about the gritty details than when using .NET on Windows but you can fine tune most things. Things are running pretty smooth now though I am still trying to figure out how to debug from a GDB core dump.
elwell 13y ago
For those of you wondering what Mono is: Cross platform, open source .NET development framework [Linux, Windows, Mac]-compatible .NET http://www.mono-project.com http://www.mono-project.com
rbanffy 13y ago
"There are also a couple of patches to deal with paths (Windows vs Unix paths)" Is it still a problem?! Seriously?

154 points by ot 13y ago

Keeps getting better. Let's hope there will be a single unified cross-platform .NET-Mono-Framework in future with native capabilities.

socialist_coder 13y ago

I hope Unity3d improves their C# environment soon (maybe Roslyn will make it easier for them?). The Monodevelop that comes with Unity 4.3 (latest) is pretty buggy.

cwyers 13y ago
MonoDevelop shouldn't be affected by this at all in the short term (although eventually MonoDevelop may get new features from this). The actual Mono runtime that comes with Unity isn't getting upgraded because of licensing issues, which as far as I can tell, is because you can't ship LGPL code on certain systems (I think the App Store license is incompatible with the LGPL, for starters).
- uvTwitch 13y ago
  Is there any option whatsoever for Unity to use future versions of Mono, or does the GPL corruption in more recent versions mean that they're legally stuck with an outdated version?
  - cwyers 13y ago
    Unity has a license from Novell for an older version of the software, which is how they can use it in places they can't use the LGPL. Xamarin sells Mono under a commercial license, but Unity apparently doesn't want to pay what Xamarin is asking for a license to the updated code.
    - shadowmint 13y ago
      Which is sad because the massive unity code base is stuck in the C# dark ages. On the other hand, mono is 'open source' so it's kind of rubbish for Xamarin to be asking license fees when they have their own (pretty rubbish) competing game stack with monogame that they have a vested interest in (not commercially, but Xamarin developers work on it). I find this sort of 'kind of open source but actually you have to pay us ahahahahaa~' thing pretty distasteful.
      - sanxiyn 13y ago
        What is distasteful about it? Unity is not open source. If Unity were open source, it could use Mono under LGPL, no problem.
        shadowmint 13y ago
        It's the 'I want a piece of your pie' thing, that I also find troubling with patents. Person A: Invents something, fails to capitalize on it. Person B: does marketing work, sells all the Monies! Person A: -__- Oh that was clever. Actually, I want some of your money please. Person B: Fuck off. <--- The correct response. If you make something and want to sell it, sell it. If you make something and give it away for free, don't come crying when someone else sells it. The 'dual license GPL' approach to software which is 'kind of free unless you sell it, in which case we'll negotiate some nice on going licensing fees' seems disingenuous to the spirit of open source (and specifically the GPL) to me.
        knocte 13y ago
        You clearly don't understand open source. Go do some reading and later come back here. Some tips: free doesn't mean "gratis", it comes from "freedom". Therefore it is normal that the GPL uses a strategy to avoid that derived works become proprietary ('proprietary' means: essentially "non-free" for the end-user, and "free" for the developer). From your comment it seems that you confuse the fact that opensource is not something that benefits the developer; it is something that benefits the end user! Don't forget that.
  - sanxiyn 13y ago
    Unity has an option. They can pay Xamarin. They don't want to. The end.
    - tkubacki 13y ago
      Nowadays if I needed scripting lang I would probably go with Dartlang: better license, not a clone, probably better perf, simple concurrent prog model and still syntax is familiar.
- krisgee 13y ago
  Isn't Roslyn under Apache? Or am I misunderstanding the point here?
  - cwyers 13y ago
    Unity uses the Mono runtime. Roslyn is a compiler. Mono has its own compiler, actually, which is available under either the GPL or the MIT/X11 license. If having a non-LGPL compiler was sufficient for Unity, the MIT/X11 license for the Mono compiler would have already sufficed.

jnardiello 13y ago

Recently we have started using Mono for a huge project. We have a pure unix-based stack and everyone cringed at the idea of running a .net application on Unix but decided to give it a try. HUGE mistake. After a couple months of development we have (today) abandoned the project and decided to take a different direction. Mono isn't just reliable for production, as simple as that. It will inevitably have unstable and unpredictable behaviours, period. That said, it might still be good alternative for desktop local apps. Just make sure you save your work enough times during your workflow ;)

rottyguy 13y ago
can you elaborate more on the reliability please?
- jnardiello 13y ago
  Well, by "unpredictable" i mean truly unpredictable. You can randomly get seg-faults with no stack trace nor log, 100% CPU sorted only by dirty tricks that totally out of question in production-like environments, etc.. Most of the problems weren't caused by mono alone nor by the app alone. The really buggy behaviors came out with the interaction of the two.
  - rottyguy 13y ago
    was hoping to hear something more concrete and what you had to do to resolve it (also what finally broke the camel's back to decide to walk away). I realize it could involve a bit of verbage but given the interest in .net openness these days, some real world scrutiny would be beneficial to us interested observers.
  - giulianob 13y ago
    What type of app were you running? Website or regular app? Also what version of Mono were you using? I have been running my server app for a few months now on 3.x and had some issues. For example, the default threadpool size is too small, the default implementation of FastCGI on Mono is super slow (there are alternatives out), and the GC behaves a bit differently (nursery size and collection schedule is different). I did have to learn more about the gritty details than when using .NET on Windows but you can fine tune most things. Things are running pretty smooth now though I am still trying to figure out how to debug from a GDB core dump.

elwell 13y ago

For those of you wondering what Mono is: Cross platform, open source .NET development framework [Linux, Windows, Mac]-compatible .NET http://www.mono-project.com http://www.mono-project.com

rbanffy 13y ago

"There are also a couple of patches to deal with paths (Windows vs Unix paths)" Is it still a problem?! Seriously?