[Nant-users] multiple runtime support

[Gert Driesen]

Hi,   I'm sorry for crossposting to both the users and developers list, but I think this is something that needs everyone's attention.   In my opinion we urgently need to come up with a strategy for implementing support for multiple runtimes, and for making tasks runtime-aware.  The release of the .NET Framework 1.1 is imminent, and Mono is making good progress so the chance that projects need to build assemblies for multiple runtimes is increasing.   I suggest that we create a RuntimeInfo class that will have the following properties :       - Identifier (eg. NET-1.0, Mono-1.0)     - Name (eg. Microsoft .NET Framework)     - Version (eg. 1.0)   This class would also have properties or methods for retrieving the framework directory (eg. C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.0.3705, this can be read from the registry) and sdk directory (eg. C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\SDK\v1.1) for the runtime which it represents and a method or bool for determining whether it's available.   We could have strong-typed RuntimeCollection class and the Project class would have two properties :       - SupportedRuntimes (collection of RuntimeInfo classes)     - AvailableRuntimes (collection of RuntilmeInfo classes that are available on the current system)   The Project class could also have a method that accepts a runtime indentifier and that will return bool indicating whether the runtime is currently available on the system.  The question is, when is a runtime available ? When both it's framework directory (the directory containing the assemblies) and the sdk directory are available (sdk is installed) ?   The project class and element would also get a new attribute for specifying the default runtime.  If no default runtime is provided, then the runtime under which is running is the default.   On the task level (would this be implemented on the base Task class or a new RuntimeAware task from which tasks that need to be aware of the targeted runtime environment should derive ?) we would be having a runtime attribute that accepts a runtime identifier.  In no runtime was explicitly specified on the task level, this property should return the default runtime that was set on the Project level or the runtime in which nant is running, if no default runtime was specified.   Th setter of this property would immediately check if the specified runtime is supported and available, and throw a buildexception otherwise.  The base class for the runtime-aware tasks would have method for retrieving the framework and sdk directories.  Which would return the directory for the runtime that was specified on the task level, if it's supported and available.  It would return the information about the default runtime, if it was specified on the project level. Or it will return the information of the runtime in which nant is running, if no runtime was specified on the task level and no default runtime was specified on the project level.   I'm just brainstorming a litle here (it's 6 am here, so don't count on all this being very accurate), but I think we need to get this discussion started (this and a good logging infrastructure need to get attention urgently)   Miguel de Icaza (from the Mono project) is willing to change the windows setup package for Mono to register it's location(s) and version(s) in the registry, he just wants some help for implementing it in the setup package.  That would allow us to discover the location and availability of both .NET Framework 1.0, .NET Framework 1.1, .NET Compact Framework 1.1 and Mono runtimes without using hacks.   Just my 2 cents,   Gert