6.0.3 - Started

Finally time for a progress report on 6.0.3 - I have finally started on this and there is now a git branch called 'u6.0.3'. With this change set (1cd0904b19), version 6.0.3 compiles in Monodevelop 4. The overall changes were minimal. However, some preliminaries are required.

Here are the preliminaries:

• Monodevelop: As of today, you will need git rev cfb8e3bc5d or c1cecf5931. Avoid rev b916eecb8c, as this rev does not compile cleanly. We need these changes so that references are updated correctly in the .csproj files.


• Nuget package restore. There is a tool available for this in:
  

  $ tools/mono/RestoreNugetPackages.sh

  
  This is a blunt tool and restores all packages, including Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure, which we actually do not want, as we will be using Mono's corresponding dll. So project references need to re-adjusted afterwords.


• The shell script above uses a small custom build task. I was only able to write this as a C# assembly. I could not write it as an inline build task, as xbuild was throwing errors. The build task itself fixes another xbuild bug, namely incorrect handling of the ';' and '\' character. The former is always interpreted in the unix context, and the latter is always converted to '/'. Related info here.


• Finally, as Mono does not yet fully support native MVC 4, I have switched to using the stock ASP.NET stack that we get from NuGet. We will see what kind of mileage we will get from these.