Mono

There have been various references made about Second Life scripting being retooled with Mono sometime in the near future.

Purported features of Mono in Second Life:

• Substantial speed improvements ("300 to 500 times")
• It has been stated that at some future date after the launch of Mono in Second Life other languages such as C# will be added.

Languages Other Than LSL

Any language that has a CIL compiler can be run on Mono and, in theory, used as a scripting language in SecondLife. This includes C#, Visual Basic .NET, Nemerle, IronPython, Boo, Delphi.NET, etc. However, various statements made by BabbageLinden and others on the Second Life forums seem to indicate that other languages will not be immediately available to use in Second Life scripts. After the launch of Mono, scripting will still be restricted to LSL for some time. No ETA has been given as to when other languages will be available for use in Second Life scripting. A list of supported languages in Mono can be found here.

External Compilation of Second Life Mono Scripts

As there are more than a few CIL compilers out there, it should be possible to compile to your own CIL bytecode from your favorite language. If you could upload this directly to Second Life then you would be able to use your favorite language and IDE to compile your Second Life scripts. All you would need are the ll* function library assemblies. Or even just some kind of stubs to those assemblies. Such stubs would probably not be that hard to create on your own, actually.

Pages that reference Mono:

• Babage Linden's blog, in particular, this post from April indicates that Mono-based scripts will run 300 to 500 times faster than LSL scripts!
• Bytecode
• KeknehvPsaltery
• TauNino

Gordon, I took the liberty of making your links to c++ and c# point somewhere. =) I set them to external links, rather than writing a new page for them because A. There is already more written than I could write in one night or week and B. I don't think it follows the LSL-oriented nature of the wiki to be dedicating whole pages to other languages. =) - St. Psaltery

Sounds good to me though I think I would have prefered the Wikipedia entries myself. :) - GordonPrior 14/Jan/2006 13:48

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