Re: Volunteer

On 11/20/04 Maciej wrote:
> I want to contribute in MONO and I am intrested in implementing 
> new garbage collector. I know that it's not easy and would take
> a long time. I want to choose this as my thesis subject,  and finish it until 
> June next year.  

The timeframe is likely too short, so you'll probably have to select
a subset of the complete work (but of course you're welcome to try
and implement it all in time;-).

You should read docs/precise-gc in the mono module for an overview
of the changes needed in mono for a precise, generational GC.

> I have a few questions.
> -I want to know how a cooperation between me and Mono team should look like.

Basically we'd hash out the design details together and you'd
write the code. Then we'll comment the code and when it's ok
we'll commit to svn. As soon as you have a few high quality patches
you'll be given svn commit access (though patches that are outside of
the GC-proper will still need approval at least for a while).
If you read the precise-gc doc you'll note that there are a few
changes needed in the runtime before a new GC could be plugged in: 
this is kind boring work, since it needs good debugging abilities.
Once that is done, the real fun can begin with the implementation 
of an actual GC.
Mono is free software, the runtime is licensed with the LGPL license,
so you can do the work and license it accordingly, but contributions
to the runtime need copyright assignment to Novell to be committed in svn.
Note that the copyright assignment form grants you back almost all the
rights to the code you wrote, so you can still do whatever you want with 
your code.
If you have any issue with this or if you want more details please mail me
and miguel, so we can address the issues.

> -Is somebody working on this? 

Not currently: we planned to start actively working on it after mono 1.2.

> -Who personaly is resposible for GC ?

Me, Zoltan and Dick all looked at some of the GC stuff, but you
should consider this or the mono-devel list collectively as
the people responsible for it.

> If you have any suggestions, advice or anything please feel free.
> (specially if you can recomend me some books,articles,etc.)

Google for generational|precise gc and you'll get all the interesting stuff:-)

lupus

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