The Mono debate over on the GNOME desktop developer mailing list is heating up again. Philip Van Hoof makes a compelling argument about the need for GNOME decision makers to take into consideration future developers and the over-reliance of C and GObject in GNOME. At what point does a general-purpose, high level framework and runtime become a necessity for GNOME?
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Member since:2005-11-14
All the Mono applications I have on my system cannot run for more than 2 hours without crashing. In addition they consume lots of memory and are slow. Everytime I update Mono, I have to recompile all my mono applications. My conclusion is that Mono is not stable enough to get into GNOME
The only Mono app that keeps running on my desktop is beagle, and it does not take lots of memory (when I adopted it, this bug was fixed). I don't have to recompile it every time I update Mono either, as long as it's very minor revisions. The apps are not really slow, but definitely slower than C Gnome apps though.
Python has seen over 10 years of development. It is high level, it is dynamic, it is exceedingly popular among free software hackers, it is versatile and it fits the needs of GNOME better than Mono will ever be
Perhaps it is so. But I still remember the switch from Python 2.2 to 2.4. And I'm sure Gentoo devs remember it very well too, as it was a nightmare, as Portage is python based. Not so bad for me, but I fear the next python version that is soon to be released. Or rather I don't, I know I'll have to recompile every python app, not a big deal.
But for Gnome, I have then to kill all the sessions for upgrading, which I didn't have to do before. That's because, Gnome already include important functions written with python (like some notifications or plugins). Granted, all of them are not necessarily part of the Gnome core, but are so important, that I don't think one good Gnome desktop won't use them.
Python is no slower than any Mono application I have on my system
GCompris and the famous bubble bobble clone of which I forgot the name helped prove years ago that Python could be used for desktop apps. Just don't base your core on Python, or be prepared to never upgrade or suffer.
When Mono matures and stabilizes with respect the ever evolving .NET, then we can rethink adding it to GNOME
Mono is too intrusive for now anyway.
Member since:2005-06-29
The only Mono app that keeps running on my desktop is beagle, and it does not take lots of memory (when I adopted it, this bug was fixed). I don't have to recompile it every time I update Mono either, as long as it's very minor revisions. The apps are not really slow, but definitely slower than C Gnome apps though.
I can't even get Beagle working well on my system. A process called "beagle-helper" consistently used 97% of my CPU resource over two days. I had to turn Beagle off. The upgrade from Mono version 1.1.4 to 1.1.6 broke "all" my Mono applications. Mono, as well as Java, applications take a toll on my system that I have not seen any Python applications do. Compared to Python, the Mono virtual manager takes a considerable amount of time to initialize. Thus making the startup time of Mono applications relatively long. I don't really care about this, however. In my opinion, Mono needs more time to mature.
Perhaps it is so. But I still remember the switch from Python 2.2 to 2.4. And I'm sure Gentoo devs remember it very well too, as it was a nightmare, as Portage is python based. Not so bad for me, but I fear the next python version that is soon to be released. Or rather I don't, I know I'll have to recompile every python app, not a big deal.
But for Gnome, I have then to kill all the sessions for upgrading, which I didn't have to do before. That's because, Gnome already include important functions written with python (like some notifications or plugins). Granted, all of them are not necessarily part of the Gnome core, but are so important, that I don't think one good Gnome desktop
won't use them.
GCompris and the famous bubble bobble clone of which I forgot the name helped prove years ago that Python could be used for desktop apps. Just don't base your core on Python, or be prepared to never upgrade or suffer.
That's odd. If I remember correctly, you can install multiple versions of Python on the same system. Gentoo in particular supports a system called slots that makes it possible. I remember there was a period I had Python versions 2.3 and 2.4 installed on my system. I don't recall ever recompiling/reinstalling Python applications during a Python upgrade. I believe Python has mantained backward compatibility since 2.0 or 2.2. And 2.5 to be released sometime in the next few weeks will also be backward compatible.
Member since:
2005-06-29
All the Mono applications I have on my system cannot run for more than 2 hours without crashing. In addition they consume lots of memory and are slow. Everytime I update Mono, I have to recompile all my mono applications. My conclusion is that Mono is not stable enough to get into GNOME.
Python has seen over 10 years of development. It is high level, it is dynamic, it is exceedingly popular among free software hackers, it is versatile and it fits the needs of GNOME better than Mono will ever be. Mono is moving target chasing .NET's tail. Is that the direction we want GNOME moving towards?
Python is no slower than any Mono application I have on my system. In fact, I'm developing an app in Python which launches faster than an equivalent application written in C! If your Python applications are launching slower, file a bug report.
Mono is great to help .NET developers transition their applications to Linux. And that's about it. What frustrates me the most however is the instability of Mono applications at least when compared to the Python applications I have written and tested.
When Mono matures and stabilizes with respect the ever evolving .NET, then we can rethink adding it to GNOME. Otherwise I encourage developers to look into Python for desktop application development, if C is not their cup of tea. The Python bindings for GNOME are very mature and well maintained. And I'm speaking from experience. Besides, the Python bindings are already a part of GNOME.
Edit: I also forgot to mention Python runs on more OS platforms than Mono, especially the *BSDs. Last I checked Mono is only officially supported on Linux.
Edited 2006-07-19 08:12