*Real* C#/Java support in OE

I finally found time to read Cliff Brake's excellent article summarizing his work on adding realy-working C#/.NET support to OE. Well written, it gives info why C# is useful choice for embedded systems, compares it to C and Python (great choices!) and details how to use it in OE. What of course would be *really* interesting to know is bug/feature (in the sense of performance, memory/disk footprint, compatibility with existing standards, etc.) comparison of current open-source C# and Java implementations, to be able to make choice for some new, independent project. Well, that's not going to be that easy so far.

One point where .NET has win over Java is "by default" portability/device coverage. It's pretty to write simple applications which run both on full-fledged .NET and CompactFramework, which means it's easy to develop small utils on desktop, and have them run without extensive debugging on PocketPC device. Back in the days I still bothered with trying to make PocketPC do what I need, that was a big win! Example of real-worldly usable app written in such way is here. Of course, back then, it was very hard to get full benefit of that opportunity, due to the way vendor provided toolset for .NET development - overloaded with GUIs and unimportant features, it possibly helped someone with a good favorite editor, but made integration work a great chore. Reading thru Cliff's article, one may once again rejoice that we have OpenEmbedded, which handles task of integrating 3rd-party dependencies into the project and complete deployable solution a breeze.


Returning back to Java, we are going to have fresh Java support too, thanks to the work of
Robert Schuster. Hope it will land soon in OE mainline, so the application developers/integrators for Angstrom, OpenMoko, etc. will have unprecedented choice of tools available at their fingertips!