[Pnet-developers] Towards 0.6.0 and ECMA-complete

[Rhys Weatherley]

I've been thinking about upcoming Portable.NET releases a bit today, and our 
progress towards ECMA-complete.

The plan, in a nutshell, is to get as close to ECMA-complete as possible, 
around version 0.6.0 of pnet/pnetlib, including outstanding icky issues such 
as threading and CAS-based security.

Currently we are releasing a new version roughly once a month, with the 
following releases upcoming:

    0.5.4 - end-March
    0.5.6 - end-April
    0.5.8 - end-May
    0.6.0 - end-June

I'm fairly confident that we can get ECMA nailed during the next three months, 
and hopefully a firm deadline will help us focus our efforts.

To reach the goal, all new skunk works projects will need to be put on hold in 
favour of finishing existing functionality (I'm the worst offender :-) ).  
However, if you are currently working on non-ECMA functionality that has 
already been started like the Java compiler, JIT, Reflection.Emit, etc, then 
please continue.  But give priority to ECMA issues where possible.

How to help: the biggest thing that we need is test cases.  Lots of test 
cases.  Particularly for the ECMA classes and the C# compiler.  In the former 
category, please grab a class and write as many unit tests as you can, using 
the csunit system so that they can be automated properly.  Writing test cases 
is a good way to get a feel for how pnetlib is put together, as a prelude to 
fixing bugs and adding missing functionality.

In the latter category (C# compiler), check out the "cscctest" module from the 
CVS server.  Then grab a copy of the C# spec and work through section by 
section checking that everything works as advertised, logging bugs for 
anything that doesn't work.

We can also use help with organisation: tracking down lists of things to be 
done.  And of course, patches that fix bugs and missing ECMA features are 
worth their weight in gold.

Cheers,

Rhys.