LightSpeed 3.11 vs Mono 2.8 ?

Heya,

I'm considering migrating one of my projects to Mono, which recently got a new version of 2.8. 

Have you tested LightSpeed vs Mono 2.8 yet? I've added a reference to Mindscape.Lightspeed.dll and got the following : 

Performing main compilation... 
/usr/bin/gmcs /noconfig "/out:/home/rupert/Projects/spdc.security/spdc.security.server.service/bin/Debug/spdc.security.server.service.dll" "/r:/usr/lib/mono/2.0/System.dll" "/r:/usr/lib/mono/2.0/System.ServiceModel.dll" "/r:/usr/lib/mono/2.0/System.Runtime.Serialization.dll" "/r:/home/rupert/Projects/spdc.security/spdc.security.common/bin/Debug/spdc.security.common.dll" "/r:/home/rupert/Projects/spdc.security/spdc.security.common.servicecontract/bin/Debug/spdc.security.common.servicecontract.dll" "/r:/home/rupert/Projects/spdc.security/3rd party/Mindscape/Mindscape.LightSpeed.dll" /nologo /warn:4 /debug:+ /debug:full /optimize- /codepage:utf8 "/define:DEBUG"  /t:library "/home/rupert/Projects/spdc.security/spdc.security.server.service/AssemblyInfo.cs" "/home/rupert/Projects/spdc.security/spdc.security.server.service/OrganisationService.cs"

Unhandled Exception: System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Cannot be negative. 
Parameter name: length 
  at System.String.Substring (Int32 startIndex, Int32 length) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Mono.CSharp.ImportedTypeDefinition.get_Name () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Mono.CSharp.MemberSpec.get_Name () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Mono.CSharp.Namespace.AddType (Mono.CSharp.TypeSpec ts) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Mono.CSharp.ReflectionMetaImporter.ImportAssembly (System.Reflection.Assembly assembly, Mono.CSharp.Namespace targetNamespace) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

  at Mono.CSharp.RootNamespace.ImportTypes (Mono.CSharp.CompilerContext ctx) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Mono.CSharp.GlobalRootNamespace.ComputeNamespaces (Mono.CSharp.CompilerContext ctx) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

  at Mono.CSharp.Driver.LoadReferences () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Mono.CSharp.Driver.Compile () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Mono.CSharp.Driver.Main (System.String[] args) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

Unhandled Exception: System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Cannot be negative. 
Parameter name: length 
  at System.String.Substring (Int32 startIndex, Int32 length) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Mono.CSharp.ImportedTypeDefinition.get_Name () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Mono.CSharp.MemberSpec.get_Name () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Mono.CSharp.Namespace.AddType (Mono.CSharp.TypeSpec ts) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Mono.CSharp.ReflectionMetaImporter.ImportAssembly (System.Reflection.Assembly assembly, Mono.CSharp.Namespace targetNamespace) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

  at Mono.CSharp.RootNamespace.ImportTypes (Mono.CSharp.CompilerContext ctx) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Mono.CSharp.GlobalRootNamespace.ComputeNamespaces (Mono.CSharp.CompilerContext ctx) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

  at Mono.CSharp.Driver.LoadReferences () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Mono.CSharp.Driver.Compile () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Mono.CSharp.Driver.Main (System.String[] args) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
Build complete -- 1 error, 0 warnings

---------------------- Done ----------------------

Build: 1 error, 0 warnings

We have only tested 3.1/3.11 against Mono 2.6, and a quick test against 2.8 results in the same issue as you have encountered. Ive had a look into this and the problem stems from a change in the Mono.CSharp (mcs) infrastructure with 2.8 where they dont play particularly nicely with obfuscated type names (e.g. a generic type is expected to provide a ` in the type name otherwise it blows up with the above when being imported).

If you are a source customer you can work around this for the time being by producing your own builds which will not be obfuscated, however we dont have any other workarounds for 2.8 available outside of this currently.

I will post an update once we have managed to make some headway with this, but I suspect it will either be an update to the obfuscator we use, or us manually picking out all the offending types from the obfuscation process..

Jeremy

Cheers for the quick reply Jeremy, I'm looking forward to the update.

A heads up on this - 2.8.2 includes a patch which covers the issues with obfuscation so please look to update to this as soon as possible (which is highly advised given the security patch - http://www.mono-project.com/news/archive/2011/Jan-07.html).

Jeremy