[DotGNU]Re: pnetlib architecture

[Tim Terlegård]

> Technically speaking, methods inside the VM are "internal
> call" methods, and methods outside the are VM "platform
> invoke" (or PInvoke) methods.

PInvoke methods, are they C# class methods or do they belong to pnet?


> There are tons of cases like this in the low-level libraries,
> and they are VM or OS specific.  The high-level libraries
> can usually be written completely in C#, or can access
> native code through PInvoke, which isn't VM-specific.

Something like this?

      High-level C# classes
            |                   |
           V                  V
   low-level C#        Pinvoke
     |          |                 |
    V         V               V
PInvoke   Pnet           Pnet
                |                 |
               V                V
              OS             OS

Have no idea what this figure will look like in other email clients, probably 
like chaos  :)     

> Assuming that they don't deliberately build some Mono
> VM dependency into their code, it should run on top of
> some future version of pnetlib just fine, even though the
> pnet VM has a different set of internal call methods.

Is PInvoke standardised? I mean, does Mono also use PInvoke methods? If not, 
how could Mono run on top of pnetlib?

I'm thinking of contributing to pnetlib, but I'd like to be less confused 
first  :)

-- Tim