IronPython URLs

Dave Fugate, IronPython tester and the man in charge of releases, gives us an intriguing look into what is involved in releasing a new version of IronPython. Releasing software is always a pain, for any company or project, but even more so for Microsoft. A few interesting tidbits about IronPython CodePlex releases While it's still fresh on my mind, I'll share a bit of interesting info about IronPython releases. What will blow most peoples' minds is that on average it takes us about five full working days to produce and signoff on a release for CodePlex. For example, we started the release process for IronPython 2.6 Beta 2 on Friday morning and released it today. "Dave, when all you have to do is build the 'release' configuration of the sources already on CodePlex how can it possibly take this long?" you ask. Three words: testing and Microsoft bureaucracy…err I mean "Microsoft processes". What do you want to know about IronPython? Dave Fugate is a...

Microsoft has an antagonistic history with open source to say the least. With posturing on Linux and patents still being in the very recent past the Microsoft of today still has a schizophrenic mindset on the topic. This is hardly surprising; Microsoft has bet the shop on desktop software and its major products have open source competitors (Windows -> Linux, Office -> Open Office, Visual Studio -> SharpDevelop, Eclipse and a thousand others). My experience of dealing with Microsoft and Microsoft employees has been very different, and very positive. IronPython is fully open source and was the first project to be released under Microsoft's OSI approved Ms-PL (Microsoft Public License). The members of the dynamic languages team that I have had dealings with understand open source and are committed to it; hardly surprising given that the project was established by Jim Hugunin a longstanding member of the Python community. Despite this the IronPython development process is s...

Jimmy Schementi, responsible for dynamic languages on Silverlight, has responded to the article in the Register on the licensing of the Dynamic Language Runtime. Despite its sensationalist headline, the article basically says that the DLR will remain Open Source but won't accept contributions, whilst IronPython and IronRuby will accept contributions. Jimmy confirms this, and includes the timetable for the expected release of the DLR 1.0: The DLR will Continue to be Licensed under the Ms-Pl

An article by The Register on which parts of the new dynamic languages Microsoft is creating will accept contributions from the community. Since the Dynamic Language Runtime will eventually distributed as part of the .NET framework (and used by Visual Basic.NET), they will not accept contributions to the DLR (although it is likely to remain Open Source). IronRuby already accepts community contributions into its libraries, something not yet possible with IronPython. In the future hopefully both IronPython and IronRuby will accept contributions into both the libraries and the core language. Microsoft: keep your sticky mitts off our language runtime

There are several job vacancies on the Microsoft dynamic languages team. These include devs and testers for IronPython and IronRuby. John Lam's blog has the details: Want to Work on Languages at Microsoft?

Microsoft Live Labs have announced a new project - the Volta Recompiler: Volta on Live Labs As far as I can tell, this allows you to compile IronPython (and other .NET languages) to Javascript: Microsoft Live Labs Volta helps developers who build distributed applications on the .NET platform, using the Microsoft development stack (programming languages, libraries, and Visual Studio). This version of Volta supports applications that run on the Microsoft CLR, a JavaScript-enabled browser, or a combination of the two. ... In essence Volta is a recompiler. Volta works on MSIL rather than on a textual source language. Volta rewrites MSIL into any number of target languages, including, today JavaScript and MSIL itself. ... In summary, Volta confers flexibility in the architecture dimension through: Language-independence . Write Volta code in any language that compiles into MSIL. For example...

We recently had a strange bug from a Turkish user, that uncovered an issue with Unicode strings and the Python decimal module (when used from IronPython). The easiest fix is a simple modification to 'decimal.py', and Dino (an IP developer) says that Microsoft are looking at shipping the Python standard library with IronPython to make this kind of modification easier (a big step for Microsoft): Resolver Goes Multinational, Real World Problems with Resolver, IronPython Localization Issues and an Important Announcement

Visual Basic 10 Ideology Emerging Details of Visual Basic 10 are starting to emerge. This is a new version of Visual Basic that is slated to (at least optionally) replace VBA. Developers having been asking for more dynamic language features, so VB 10 will be built on the DLR. ALT.NET Impressions Scott Guthrie & Scott Hanselman at ALT.NET Scott Guthrie and Scott Hanselman presented at the recent ALT.NET conference. They showed the new MVC version os ASP.NET - including the ability to create Controllers in IronPython and an IronPython view using a WebFormViewEngine. Demos of new technology from Microsoft always seem to involve illustrating the IronPython integration! Want a job working on IronPython? Software Development Test Engineer The Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) team is expanding and is looking for a highly motivated and passionate engineer to join its test team. The DLR team is focused on delivering the most complete solutions around dynamic languages on .NET with respect to ...

Microsoft has just announced that it will be making the source code to a lot of the major .NET class libraries available. They will not be under an open source library, but it is still a big step. Scott Guthrie on Releasing the Source Code for the .NET Framework Libraries Miguel de Icaza comments on what this does (and doesn't) mean for Mono. Mono is already distributing some Microsoft code (including IronPython...) that is available under their permissive license (which will soon be renamed the 'open' license - presumably in response to the OSIs request): Microsoft Opens up the .NET Class Libraries Source Code

IronPython features in several places on Microsoft's websites. We covered the Knowledge Tools page, here are a few more: IronPython Samples - Examples of how to integrate a new language with various aspects of Visual Stdio (from compiler tasks to syntax highlighting to deployment) Microsoft Robotics Centre - Three tutorials on using Microsoft Robotics with IronPython Sho : I've found various references to Sho as a "an interactive language for scientific computing based on IronPython". I can't find a website for it, but one of the pages it is mentioned on is the page of Sumit Basu Comparing & Managing Multiple Versions of Slide Presentations (pdf) - Research project on managing slide presentations, that used IronPython Common Language Runtime: IronPython and .NET Scripting Languages - A video presentation by Mahesh Prakriya (lead manager of the CLR team) 2006 Lang.NET Symposium: IronPython and Beyond - A presentation by Jim Hugunin Developing Agile bu...

An interesting quote on the Microsoft Knowledge Tools page: To make research progress, we build prototype tools and get them into the hands of these types of users. We build many of our prototype tools on top of IronPython, a version of Python for .NET. Python is like a virus, once it infects one part of a company it spreads everywhere...

Microsoft have submitted their Shared Source Licenses to the OSI for approval as a recognised 'Open Source' licenses: Intelligent Design, the OSI and Microsoft There is now part of the Microsoft website devoted to open source , plus a blog from thier open source labs called Port 25 .