From: "John Lam (DLR)" <jflam@...>
Date: 2007-10-24T21:08:11+09:00
Subject: Re: IronRuby...will it be like J++?

Thufir:

> >> I think the biggest risk to IronRuby is the CLR, not the IronRuby
> >> implementation itself. As noted, that's in a reasonably open
> license.
> >
> > I'm interested in why you think that the CLR is a risk? We've
> > standardized CLR via the CLI and there is an open-source
> implementation
> > of the CLR in Mono. DLR / IronRuby should just run on Mono in binary
> > form.
>
> Very cool to hear from someone at Microsoft.  My concern, on reading
> the
> above, is that Mono apps work great when going from Microsoft to Linux,
> but not all Mono apps work great when going from Linux to Microsoft.
>
> In and of itself, that's a hassle.  However, the long term effect would
> be detrimental for Ruby on Linux, which would be viewed as a backwater.

Are you talking about library compatibility or are there runtime compatibility issues? If the latter, this would seem to be something that is either:

a) a bug in one of our implementations vs. the CLI spec or
b) something unclear in the CLI spec

Both a) and b) have happened and we've been able to resolve those issues with the Mono team. There's also the other issue where their implementation tends to lag behind the latest versions of the CLR / C# as well, but that's more of a resourcing problem rather than a technical one (I'm sure they could use more help on their project too!)

-John