[DotGNU]Portable.NET update 6 Dec 2001

[Rhys Weatherley]

I've been very busy in pnetlib during the last week and
a half, working on the following major areas:

- System
- System.Text
- System.IO
- System.Reflection
- System.Reflection.Emit
- Simpler to use resource system for translating the
  library into foreign languages.
- Smarter default message handling in exception classes.
- Began work on a unit test framework for the library.

I'm also working on a program called "csdocvalil" which
can be used to perform automated validation of pnetlib
against the definitions in the ECMA library specification.

The native method interface documentation for pnetlib
is about 95% complete.  The "native.html" file describes
all of the functionality that a CLR must provide to make
pnetlib work correctly.  I'm working on updating pnet to
match this document.  Other CLR vendors are welcome
to implement to the same native method interface and
save themselves the trouble of building their own C# library.

A special mention goes out to Bradley Kuhn of the FSF
for spotting "Linux vs GNU/Linux" and "open source
vs Free Software" policy bugs in the README months
after I thought I'd squashed them all.  Whoops. :-)

No official release this week.  All changes can be
obtained via CVS.  An official release of pnet and
pnetlib should go out next week once I've updated
the native method interface in pnet to match pnetlib.

Cheers,

Rhys.