[DotGNU]Portable.NET 0.4.6 released

[Rhys Weatherley]

New versions of pnet, pnetlib, and treecc have been released:

Web Page: http://www.southern-storm.com.au/portable_net.html
Download: http://www.southern-storm.com.au/download/pnet-0.4.6.tar.gz
Library:  http://www.southern-storm.com.au/download/pnetlib-0.3.0.tar.gz
Treecc:   http://www.southern-storm.com.au/download/treecc-0.1.6.tar.gz

The big news in this release is that pnetlib can finally be compiled
with pnet.  Hooray!  Many thanks to the Weekend Warriors for their hard
work getting this working.

Of course, this is no guarantee that pnetlib completely works just yet.
There may still be some compiler bugs that cause the wrong code to be
generated.  I urge everyone to try testing with the pnet-compiled pnetlib.

For the time being, the assemblies in "pnet/samples" are still compiled
with MS'es compiler, but the sooner we can eliminate that the better.

See the appended NEWS entries for the full details.

Cheers,

Rhys.

Portable.NET 0.4.6 (5 November 2002)

Runtime engine:

* Reversed test in "ComputeInterfaceTable".
* Internalcalls for DNS lookup (Gopal V).
* Fix verification of "calli" signatures.
* Use the correct PC when entering a method using "calli".
* Suppress GC finalization during "ConvertMethod", because it can
  cause dead locks if garbage collection happens during method
  conversion.
* Use explicit field layout information even if the class is
  not marked for layout.
* Truncation bug in "String.Replace" internalcall (Gopal V).
* Deserialize attributes when accessed via reflection (Gopal V).
* Handle out of memory in the memory cache a bit better.
* DirMethods.GetFilesInDirectory (Charles Schuller).
* File/directory time internalcalls (Richard Baumann).
* Number formatting internalcalls for floating-point (Richard Baumann).

Compiler:

* Redesign the representation of "CSSemValue" to make it easier to
  change to meet new requirements in the future.
* Look for parameter blocks on the actual method, not the reference.
* Implicitly coerce zero to enumerated types in binary operators.
* Fixes to type handling in the C compiler.
* Compile attributes to their serialized form properly.
* Make sure that "this" is included when accessing value type members.
* Normalize delegates to use the "native int" type in their signatures.
* Convert "out" parameters into l-values, not s-values, to be
  consistent with other C# compilers.
* Better flow analysis to detect when a block ends in "return",
  "break", "continue", etc.
* Rearrange how "base.X" is compiled, to fix long-standing bugs.
* Name and coercion bugs related to "IntPtr" and "UIntPtr".
* Fix semantic analysis for string and object comparisons.
* Scan interface parents when looking for the iterator methods used
  by "foreach".
* Use the array form of a "params" parameter inside a method,
  not the element form.
* Allow casting amongst unmanaged pointers and integer types
  within unsafe blocks (Jonathan Springer).
* Equality and inequality operators for unmanaged pointers
  (Jonathan Springer).
* Use "Exception" on default type-less "catch" clauses (Gopal V).
* Change "new" errors for duplicates into warnings (Gopal V).
* Operation assignment fixes for small integer types (Jonathan Springer).
* Builtin << and >> operators for enums (Gopal V).
* "goto case" and "goto default" (Gopal V).
* Some early ideas for Parrot code generation.
* Fix constant coercion in arguments and expressions (Jonathan Springer
  and Gopal V).
* Recognise identifiers as types when appropriate (Jonathan Springer).
* Treat Object as an implicit parent of interfaces when searching
  for members (Gopal V).
* Introduce the "ILNode_SemAnalysisType" node operation to deal
  with modes that only look for types (Jonathan Springer).
* Save and restore the current method when doing "jump" semantic
  analysis on the members of an enum type (Robert Hwang).
* Fixes to unboxing (Gopal V).
* Fix lexical analysis for UTF-8 characters in strings.
* Don't generate overflow instructions for floating point (Gopal V).
* base.X handling for properties (Gopal V).
* IndexerName attribute (Gopal V).
* Fix floating-point casts (Robert Hwang).
* Work around order of compilation issues for "ParamArrayAttribute".

Assembler:

* Fix jump target squashing in the presence of "switch" instructions.
* JVM assembler output improved (Sylvain Pasche).
* Fixes for multiple exception handlers associated with a block.

Loader and Metadata:

* Serialization write support.
* Move forward-referenced fields to the end of the class when they
  are defined, to ensure that the source field order is preserved.

Platform Support:

* Bug in the conversion of C# file access modes into POSIX "O_" flags.
* Correct daylight savings adjustments (Richard Baumann).

Other:

* Add the "ilheader" utility, which can generate .h files for
  importing C# assemblies into cscc-compiled C applications.
* Dump stand-alone signatures correctly in "dumpasm".
* Add full method signatures to "ilverify" output (Jonathan Springer).
* Use the cygwin path functions to generate the correct Win32 paths
  to pass to "csc" from "csant".
* Bison 1.5 and 1.75 compatibility fixes (Sasa Jovanic, Jonathan Springer).

pnetlib 0.3.0 (5 November 2002)

* System.Uri fixes (Stephen Compall).
* System.Net.Sockets.TcpClient, TcpListener (Francis Rogers).
* System.Net.Dns (Gopal V).
* Test suite updates (lots of people).
* Rearrange test suite to make it more logical (Jonathan Springer).
* Remove csunit code from pnetlib, as it is now in pnet.
* Turn off metadata compiles, as it now builds with pnet.
* System.IO.Path (Gopal V).
* System.Reflection.Emit.TypeBuilder (Richard Baumann).
* System.Attribute.GetAttr (Gopal V).
* System.Collections.ArrayList.MoveNext (Gopal V).
* GetFilesInDirectory, GetPathRoot (Charles Schuller).
* File get time methods (Richard Baumann).
* Math.Max fix (Richard Baumann). 
* Simple number formatting for floating-point values (Richard Baumann).

treecc 0.1.6 (5 November 2002)

* Fix C++ code generation in the declaration of virtual operations.
* Add Ruby code generation (Peter Minten).
* "Quick and Dirty" guide to extending treecc to new languages.