[DotGNU]Portable.NET 0.5.10 released

[Rhys Weatherley]

Portable.NET 0.5.10 has been released:

Web Page: http://www.southern-storm.com.au/portable_net.html
Download: http://www.southern-storm.com.au/download/pnet-0.5.10.tar.gz
Library:  http://www.southern-storm.com.au/download/pnetlib-0.5.10.tar.gz
pnetC:    http://www.southern-storm.com.au/download/pnetC-0.5.10.tar.gz
ml-pnet:  http://www.southern-storm.com.au/download/ml-pnet-0.5.10.tar.gz

I've broken with tradition a little - the next release after 0.5.8 would
normally be 0.6.0.  However, the pnet developers have decided to put out
0.5.10, 0.5.12, etc, as release candidates for 0.6.0, which will be
part of DotGNU 0.1.

A lot has happened this release.  The System.Windows.Forms namespace is
coming along well, thanks to the help of many people in the DotGNU
community - particularly Simon Guindon, Neil Cawse, Richard Baumann,
Ian Fung, Cecilio Pardo, and the relentless Gopal V.

The C compiler is now working enough to allow people to write real C
applications.  We need assistance on the pnetC library, to port glibc
across to run in the Portable.NET environment.

Thong Nguyen has been working very hard on threading this month, and
has achieved a lot!  Threading is now working quite well - help with
testing on various platforms would be appreciated.

Richard Baumann has also been working on System.Reflection.Emit, and is
making good progress.

The CVM unroller was also rewritten into a generic framework that should
be much easier to port to new architectures.

For more information, see the attached NEWS files.  Checksums are attached.

Cheers,

Rhys.

Portable.NET 0.5.10 (26 July 2003)

Runtime engine:

* Enable the verifier debug mode by default.
* Implement tail calls properly.
* Enum string formatting (Thong Nguyen, Gopal V).
* Run a final GC and finalizer pass before engine shutdown.
* Explicitly call the static constructor in the main class (Gopal V).
* Add the "-C" option to control the method cache size (Yannis Bres).
* Add stack traces to exception objects thrown by the engine.
* New monitor implementation (Thong Nguyen).
* Prevent the process from exiting until all user threads have
  been properly terminated (Thong Nguyen).
* Configuration switch for object or hashing monitors (Thong Nguyen).
* Internalcalls for threading (Thong Nguyen).
* De-initialize the GC properly at engine shutdown (Thong Nguyen).
* Move finalization to a separate thread (Thong Nguyen).
* Use atomic allocation for objects with no GC'able fields.
* Register finalizers for atomic objects (Thong Nguyen).
* Lock out the method cache while the unroller is running.
* Don't create an OS thread until "Thread.Start" (Thong Nguyen).
* Work around "va_list" problems under PPC GNU/Linux systems.
* Bytecode verifier fixes (Gopal V).
* Implement the generic unroller for x86 and ARM.
* Internalcalls for "System.Reflection.Emit" (Richard Baumann).
* Manual register assignment for PPC (two times speed up).
* Change interface dispatch to use Interface Method Tables (IMT's).
* Abandon finalization for objects that survive shutdown (Thong Nguyen).
* Reuse array types where possible to prevent memory leaks.
* Compute the right array offsets for multi-dimensional arrays (Gopal V).
* Handle "GetType" properly for array types (Gopal V).
* Promote primitive types during array references (Gopal V).
* Internalcalls for "System.Diagnostics.Process".
* Add a "--dumpconfig" option (Gopal V).
* Handle nested types properly in the internalcall table (Gopal V).
* Look for both ".exe" and ".EXE" file extensions.
* Fix stack merging for ternary control flows (Gopal V).

Common Compiler Issues:

* Incorrect code generation for casting "uint" to "byte".
* Speed up the detection of "-flatin1-charset" (Gopal V).
* Fixes to indirect casting (Gopal V).
* Add the "-winforms" convenience option (Gopal V).
* Grammar errors detected by Bison 1.75 (Gopal V).
* Add the "--version" option (Gopal V).
* Detect single-file plugins correctly in the front end.

C# Compiler:

* Some new syntax for calling C# from C - can simply declare an
  "extern" method inside the "__module" type.
* Report errors for "Finalize" methods that are not properly
  declared as destructors.
* Report an error for "override" members with no corresponding "virtual".
* "unchecked" is required for large "uint" to "int" conversions.
* Fully gather a type before moving to nested types (Gopal V).
* Handle escape sequences in the C# pre-processor better (Gopal V).
* Distinguish '<' used as an operator or in a generic type reference.
* Handle NaN properly for relational operators (Gopal V).

C Compiler:

* Flush global initializers between functions.
* Remove unnecessary dereferencing in "(*f)()" expressions.
* Semantic analysis problems in the third argument of "?:".
* Always allow casts to "void", regardless of source type.
* Permit "register" to appear in a formal parameter list.
* Decay array types are dereferencing with '*'.
* Clone all type modifiers when copying a "struct" type.
* Don't output type definitions for dangling class references.
* Anonymous enumerated types are always replaced with the underlying type.
* Code generation and semantic analysis for initializers.
* Force ".init" to be called from any function that references
  global variables, so that C# code can call C without going
  through the Crt0 initialization step first.
* Wide character constants and strings.
* Fix "sizeof(long double)" to use the correct boxing type.
* Fix "sizeof" to correctly measure the length of strings.
* Replace the clumsy "__invoke__" syntax with "T::method" instead.
* Quote cpp arguments on MacOS X.
* Add "error" declarations to the parser to improve error recovery.
* Move includes from ${prefix}/lib to ${prefix}/share to be consistent
  with Debian packaging guidelines.

Java Compiler:

* Wrap "for" statements in a scope block (Gopal V).

Assembler:

* Output debug information for local variables and their scopes.

Loader and Metadata:

* Scope problems - sometimes finding a nested class instead of global.
* Move the ".ildebug" section to the end of the image so it can be
  more easily stripped using "ilstrip".
* Forcibly change TypeRef's into TypeDef's in "ILClassCreate" to
  work around MS'es assembler which outputs same-assembly TypeRef's.
* Start adding support for ".rsrc" sections.
* Load "ParamDef" tokens on-demand.
* Modifications to support "System.Reflection.Emit" (Richard Baumann).
* Look for both ".dll" and ".DLL" file extensions.

Linker:

* Properly resolve nested types with the same names by different parents.
* Initializers and finalizers.
* Strip multiple '/' characters from the end of ar member names,
  because some archives have filenames ending in "//".
* Change the default output from "a.out.exe" to "a.out" or "a.exe",
  to be consistent with gcc.

Platform Support:

* Modify libffi so that it works for both cdecl and winapi.
* Always use "LoadLibrary" to load native DLL's under Win32.
* Recognize both '/' and '\' as pathname separators, to work around
  Windows programmers who don't use DirectorySeparatorChar like
  they should.
* Better detection in configure.in for the thread system (Thong Nguyen).
* Socket options (Gopal V).
* Change "MAX_THREADS" to 1024 in libgc (Thong Nguyen).
* Remove "ffitest" from the build because it breaks IA-64.
* Move the console input code to "support".

Other:

* Adjust hash tables to use prime sizes for better element spread.
* Add the "cssrc2html" program (Jeff Post).
* Modify "csdoc2html" to generate href's to "cssrc2html" (Jeff Post).
* Update the C ABI and users guide.
* Modify "ilheader" to match changes to the C compiler.
* Add "ilstrip" and "ilranlib" to round out the toolchain.
* All "cli-unknown-*" symlinks to make cscc look like a cross-compiler.

pnetlib 0.5.10 (26 July 2003)

System.Windows.Forms:

* Form, TextBoxBase, Menu (Rhys Weatherley).
* StatusBar, CheckBox (Simon Guindon).
* ProgressBar, Panel, MessageBox (Gopal V).
* ImageList, ImageListStreamer, ToolBar, ToolBarButton, ComboBox,
  CommonDialog, FileDialog, OpenFileDialog, PictureBox, ScrollBar
  (Richard Baumann).
* LinkLabel (Ian Fung).
* Binding, BindingManagerBase, BindingCollection, CurrencyManager,
  ListControl (Cecilio Pardo).
* System.Drawing.Win32, TabControl, TabPage, TextBox (Neil Cawse).
* Change WndProc from "public" to "protected" (Rhys Weatherley).
* Missing "*EventHandler" and "*EventArgs" classes (Rhys Weatherley).
* "Darker" and "Lighter" methods in "Control Paint" (Rhys Weatherley).
* Modify the event loop so that control always goes back to winforms
  after an event is processed (Rhys Weatherley).
* Key event dispatching (Rhys Weatherley).
* Timers (Rhys Weatherley).
* Popup windows in Xsharp and winforms (Rhys Weatherley).
* Move theme handling to "System.Windows.Forms.Themes" (Rhys Weatherley).
* Layout parents when children change size (Simon Guindon).
* Region handling (Neil Cawse).

Other:

* Implement "Environment.OSVersion" for better platform detection (Rhys).
* Command-line count bug in "Process" (Yannis Bres).
* Add "-flatin1-charset" to all build files, to speed things up (Gopal V).
* Threading changes to match the engine (Thong Nguyen).
* Wide string support in Crt0 (Rhys Weatherley).
* Make default console writers synchronized (Thong Nguyen).
* "Socket.SupportsIPv6" (Gopal V).
* Detect byte encodings in "StreamReader" better (Thong Nguyen).
* Bug fixes to "XmlTextReader" (Adam Ballai).
* DotGNU.Images support library (Rhys Weatherley).
* Re-sync "System.Text.RegularExpressions" with original (Gopal V).
* Dashed pens in Xsharp (Rhys Weatherley).
* Xft font support in Xsharp (Rhys Weatherley).
* Multi-digit format specifiers in "String" (Gopal V).
* Beginnings of a Postscript driver for System.Drawing (Rhys Weatherley).
* Number formatting fixes (Gopal V).
* System.Reflection.Emit (Richard Baumann).
* System.CodeDom (Rhys Weatherley).
* File-based registry implementation (Rhys Weatherley).
* Remaining formatting methods in DateTime (Rhys Weatherley).

pnetC 0.5.10 (26 July 2003)

* Began porting the glibc version of stdio into pnetC.
* Use the "Type::Method" syntax instead of "__invoke__".
* Make sure that autoconf detects cscc as a cross-compiler.
* Move the include files from ${prefix}/lib to ${prefix}/share.

ml-pnet 0.5.10 (26 July 2003)

* Updates to match changes to Mono build system (Gopal V).

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