[arch-dev-public] Mono release 2.8 with major changes is coming (soon)

[Daniel Isenmann]

  Am 04.08.2010 16:19, schrieb Eric Bélanger:
> On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 2:28 AM, Daniel Isenmann<daniel.isenmann at gmx.de>  wrote:
>>   Hi,
>>
>> I know that many of you don't use mono, but anyway a new major release is
>> coming with some changes which may affect packages which depends on mono.
>>
>> I have read the changelog draft of mono 2.8 (you can find it here:
>> http://mono-project.com/Release_Notes_Mono_2.8) and there are some
>> significant changes, like the removing of .NET 1.1 profile. Normally that
>> shouldn't be a problem, because most applications are using .NET 2.0 profile
>> and not the old 1.1, but who knows if some applications using the old one.
>> If an application uses the old 1.1 profile it will be automatically switched
>> to the 2.0 profile and a warning should appear.
>> Seven old and deprecated libraries will be removed from the mono release, to
>> be precisly:
>>   * ByteFX.Data
>>   * Mono.Data
>>   * Microsoft.JScript and Microsoft.Vsa
>>   * FirebirdSql.Data.Firebird
>>   * Mono.Data.SybaseClient
>>   * Mono.Data.SqliteClient
>>
>> Mono 2.8 will ship a new garbage collector (SGen), I will activate it by
>> default. You can change that by setting an environment variable (information
>> will follow at release day). The new release includes 4 new libraries from
>> Microsoft directly, they are licensed und MS-PL or Apache 2 Open Source
>> Licenses, so that shouldn't be a problem for us.
>>
>> Another critical change will be the ThreadPool behavior. This has been
>> changed and will potentially break existing applications.
>>
>> I have written in my "Away" email that you can update my packages, but
>> please DO NOT UPDATE the mono packages during my vacation. I will update
>> mono after my vacation (if it will be released in that time). As always I
>> try to do the update as smooth as possible, but this time there are some
>> real big changes in the new release which may not "allow" this.
>>
>> Sorry for the long email and such specific information about the new mono
>> release, but I think it's necessary for such a major release.
>>
>>   -Daniel
>>
> It might be a bit off-topic but I'm wondering if, with that new
> release of mono, you'll add moonlight to extra. IIRC, when we removed
> the moonlight package from community a while ago because it had to be
> rebuilt and that version wasn't building anymore, you mentionned that
> eventually you'll add moonlight to extra. Is it still your intention
> or am I remembering incorrectly?
>
> Thanks,
> Eric
>

Your are right, this is still my intention. But the actual moonlight 
sourcecode need some files from mono which are only present during 
compilation time. Furthermore the old and stable release of moonlight 
doesn't compile with our mono, but the latest snapshot doesn't compile 
with our mono, too. They need newer version of mono. The moonlight 
developers are aware of that and it should be fixed after moonlight 3.0 
final is released and depend on the current mono release then. So, the 
first moonlight version which will be added to [extra] maybe will be 
moonlight 3.0.