[Opensim-dev] Raise minimum .net framework version to 4.0 and mono version to 2.8 (with 2.10 strongly recommended) in 2Q2013

[Mike Chase]

Just curious.  Call me crazy and stuff but why are you worrying about
ancient distros with LTS for cases where upgrades to Mono are clearly
available.  And this is to support software that is perpetually alpha?  So
you are concerned about adopting .NET 4.0 features because someone might be
running an ancient version of debian or Ubuntu presumably in some production
scenarios using software you've branded as Alpha.

Why don't we call OpenSim what it is.  A research project.   People have
taken and with considerable effort doe some hardening to that sufficient to
run a production grid.  But it is what it is. 

And sorry Justin I don't meant to jump on you. You're a good guy.  You have
to deal with the other members of a board drawing lines in the sand left and
right that suit themselves and their own business interests.  Sorry Melanie,
the "it's never gonna happen" comments are so out of place for a board
member of an open public project.  Really you have no business being in the
position you are. But that's what it is as well.

Ok enough ranting.  If you feel that upgrading to the 4.0 .NET apis would
benefit OpenSim as a whole (I do) then do it.  Deciding what versions of
mono to use and what distribution to use it on are deployment considerations
that someone should be considering carefully based on what they want to use
the software for.  And if they are trying to run anything close to a
production service then they need to be aware of the issues involved in the
various versions of mono and make their choice based on that.

I doubt I get a vote but if I did I'd vote to advance the API version of
.NET and pick up the new features therein.  Document the dependencies and
let people doing deployment sort out the environment that best meets their
requirements.  My 2 cents.

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de
[mailto:opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de] On Behalf Of Justin
Clark-Casey
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 10:42 PM
To: opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
Subject: [Opensim-dev] Raise minimum .net framework version to 4.0 and mono
version to 2.8 (with 2.10 strongly recommended) in 2Q2013

After some further investigation, it turns out that Mono 2.6 does not make
the higher parameter Func calls available unless it has been built in a
special preview mode.  This is not available on at least the Ubuntu Mono
package and I suspect most, if not all, of the other distro packages as
well.

Therefore, the minimum version of Mono that will use them is 2.8 (for which
C# 4.0 is the default).  Polling the earliest supported release versions of
various Linux distros, the situation is

Debian 6.0 (squeeze)	Mono 2.6.7
Ubuntu 8.04 LTS		Mono 1.2.6
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS	Mono 2.4
Ubuntu 11.10		Mono 2.10.8.1
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS	Mono 2.10.8.1
openSUSE 11.4		Mono 2.8.2
openSUSE 12.1		Mono 2.10.6
CentOS 5		no Mono package
CentOS 6		no Mono package

I see Debian squeeze as the sticking point here.  Debian 7.0 (wheezy) will
ship Mono 2.10.8.1 and has been frozen since 2012-06-30.  Debian does not
work to release dates so it's impossible to say when it will be released,
though the indications are that it will be in the first half of this year.
Even when it is released, Debian squeeze will most probably be supported
until early 2014.

In light of this, I am going to recommend that we do not update the minimum
version of Mono until Debian wheezy is released.  We've already effectively
been living with this situation for a while so I don't think that a bit
longer is going to hurt, though making modInvoke() properly useable is
important.  If wheezy is not released by the time that OpenSimulator 0.7.6
is here, which I anticipate being shortly after Easter, then we can revisit
the topic.

This means that existing binary packages will continue to be compiled
against .NET 3.5 (though ironically the current 0.7.5-RC packages have been
compiled to work with Mono >2.8 only, which will be fixed for the final
release).

When the update occurs, everything will compile and run against Mono 2.8 but
Mono 2.10 will be strongly recommended as the Mono 2.8 series has proved
considerably buggy in the past.

Once the update is made, the target framework will be .net 4.0 rather than
.net 3.5.  This will allow c# 4.0 language features to be used and will
require the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 packages to be installed on Windows.

We've already heard arguments both ways so I doubt that it's worth rehashing
them.  However, I also think this would be a marginal decision so I welcome
any new points.

--
Justin Clark-Casey (justincc)
OSVW Consulting
http://justincc.org
http://twitter.com/justincc
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