Mono builds of IronPython (and IronRuby)

By Michael Foord -
Ivan Porto Carrero, when he's not writing IronRuby in Action, has been working on ASP.NET MVC integration with dynamic languages. His main focus has been IronRuby, but a lot of the core work (the DLR hosting API integration) applies equally to IronPython. Jeff Hardy has recently taken up the mantle of working on the IronPython integration.

Anyway, that is all by the way of an aside. In the process of doing this Ivan has been building IronPython and IronRuby for Mono. He posted this email to the IronPython mailing list:
I've added the ironpython mono package to the ironruby mono CI server. It is slightly different from the windows package it doesn't have the licenses included nor does it have the 64bit builds and the pyc.py file. The tutorial is also not in the github repository so I couldn't include that either.

you can download the packages here: ironruby.colliertech.org/
The continuous integration server is maintained by CJ Adams-Collier, and it also has a prettier interface that gives you information about recent builds.

CJ has been busy creating Debian packages for Mono 2.4.2 (the version you want if you are running IronPython) and both IronPython and IronRuby. He gives some details in a recent blog entry:
I’ve helped get the mono-2.4.2 debs moving. The mono-api-diff tool was removed after the 2.2 branch, so I grabbed it from the attic, dusted it off and patched it for use by meebey. The solution is sub-optimal, but at least he’s able to use it get things moving again.
On the subject of Mono compatibility, Miguel de Icaza (Mono lead developer for Novell) has blogged about an interesting side effect of the Moonlight project (Mono port of Silverlight):
For as long as we remember, most new versions of IronPython, IronRuby or the Dynamic Language Runtime exposed new missing functionality in Mono.

After a major release of any of these tools that deeply exercise the internal Reflection.Emit support and the runtime we would implement the missing features and ship a new Mono version.

As part of the Microsoft/Novell collaboration on Silverlight for Linux, a couple of months ago, we received from Microsoft the test suite for the Silverlight class libraries.

We have been working on fixing all of the issues exposed by the test suite. The test suite exposed bugs in Mono and missing features that are necessary for Silverlight in general, as well as the DLR and the DLR-based languages like IronRuby and IronPython.

We are pretty excited about the progress and the increased compatibility of Mono with Microsoft's .NET.
Completely off the subject now, and by way of final word, if you are interested in seeing IronPython support in Visual Studio 2010 then please vote up the following Microsoft Connect issue. Anyone can rate it or comment, you just need a Live ID.

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