Mono.Cecil and monodevelop

[Paul F. Johnson]

Hi,

For quite a while the packaging of monodevelop has patched using the
supplied version of mono.cecil with the one found in gac (which
according to the mono bods, isn't the right place for it - it is a work
in progress so should not be considered stable) so that we have one
version instead of lots of versions.

The new version of MD ships with a different version of Mono.Cecil to
the version found in gac and also build a decompiler based on that new
code (Cecil.Decompiler.dll).

I have tried a number of ways to build the newest version of MD using
the gac version of Mono.Cecil but it never works (fails to build at the
same point).

As the new MD relies on a version of Mono.Cecil which is newer than the
version in gac is it permissible to ship MD-2.4 with this newer version?
The version in gac remains untouched by this new version so other
applications reliant on the old version will still run.

TTFN

Paul

[Tom Callaway]

On 05/18/2010 10:12 AM, Paul wrote:
> Hi,
>
> For quite a while the packaging of monodevelop has patched using the
> supplied version of mono.cecil with the one found in gac (which
> according to the mono bods, isn't the right place for it - it is a work
> in progress so should not be considered stable) so that we have one
> version instead of lots of versions.
>
> The new version of MD ships with a different version of Mono.Cecil to
> the version found in gac and also build a decompiler based on that new
> code (Cecil.Decompiler.dll).
>
> I have tried a number of ways to build the newest version of MD using
> the gac version of Mono.Cecil but it never works (fails to build at the
> same point).
>
> As the new MD relies on a version of Mono.Cecil which is newer than the
> version in gac is it permissible to ship MD-2.4 with this newer version?
> The version in gac remains untouched by this new version so other
> applications reliant on the old version will still run.

Wouldn't it make sense to instead update the packaged version of
mono.cecil and fix any older apps?

~spot

[Paul F. Johnson]

Hi,
> > As the new MD relies on a version of Mono.Cecil which is newer than the
> > version in gac is it permissible to ship MD-2.4 with this newer version?
> > The version in gac remains untouched by this new version so other
> > applications reliant on the old version will still run.
>
> Wouldn't it make sense to instead update the packaged version of
> mono.cecil and fix any older apps?

It depends is the easy answer. Quite a lot of apps rely on the old
version and to fix them may not be simple.

I personally would prefer to create a mono.cecil package by itself which
everything else sucks from...

TTFN

Paul

[Tom Callaway]

On 05/18/2010 02:48 PM, Paul wrote:
> Hi,
> > > As the new MD relies on a version of Mono.Cecil which is newer than the
> > > version in gac is it permissible to ship MD-2.4 with this newer version?
> > > The version in gac remains untouched by this new version so other
> > > applications reliant on the old version will still run.
> >
> > Wouldn't it make sense to instead update the packaged version of
> > mono.cecil and fix any older apps?
>
> It depends is the easy answer. Quite a lot of apps rely on the old
> version and to fix them may not be simple.

Well, you won't know how insurmountable it is until you try. :)
> I personally would prefer to create a mono.cecil package by itself which
> everything else sucks from...

To be clear:

I'm opposed to MD bundling a copy of Mono.Cecil.

I'm not necessarily opposed to moving the old Mono.Cecil (as bundled
with mono) into its own subpackage (e.g. mono-cecil).

Heck, I'm not even opposed to updating it in that package or separating
it into its own package (and not packaging it as part of the main mono
package), assuming it doesn't cause nasty dependency loops.

We could even package the older mono-cecil in a mono-cecil0690 package,
as a last resort, but we should definitely try porting the apps first.

~spot

[Paul F. Johnson]

Hi,
> We could even package the older mono-cecil in a mono-cecil0690 package,
> as a last resort, but we should definitely try porting the apps first.

And to add further problems - guess what the version number is for
mono-cecil bundled with MD? And they're not the same....

Grr

TTFN

Paul

[Tom Callaway]

On 05/18/2010 03:56 PM, Paul wrote:
> Hi,
> > We could even package the older mono-cecil in a mono-cecil0690 package,
> > as a last resort, but we should definitely try porting the apps first.
>
> And to add further problems - guess what the version number is for
> mono-cecil bundled with MD? And they're not the same....

I'm going to guess that it is either undefined or less than the 0.6.90
version that the system mono.cecil has...

~spot

[Paul F. Johnson]

Hi,
> > And to add further problems - guess what the version number is for
> > mono-cecil bundled with MD? And they're not the same....
>
> I'm going to guess that it is either undefined or less than the 0.6.90
> version that the system mono.cecil has...

Reports as 0.6.90 but a quick diff shows otherwise...

TTFN

Paul

[Tom Callaway]

On 05/18/2010 05:38 PM, Paul wrote:
> Hi,
> > > And to add further problems - guess what the version number is for
> > > mono-cecil bundled with MD? And they're not the same....
> >
> > I'm going to guess that it is either undefined or less than the 0.6.90
> > version that the system mono.cecil has...
>
> Reports as 0.6.90 but a quick diff shows otherwise...

Awesome. Remind me again why mono is a good idea? :)

In all seriousness, is there any chance we can ask the mono.cecil
upstream to step in and put some stop to this?

~spot