DotGNU Portable.NET Library
---------------------------

This distribution contains an implementation of the C# library, for use
with .NET-capable runtime engines and applications.  Originally designed
for DotGNU Portable.NET (http://www.southern-storm.com.au/portable_net.html),
this library can be used by other .NET development efforts also.

DotGNU Portable.NET Library is part of the GNU project, developed
as part of the DotGNU (http://www.dotgnu.org/) meta-project.

The source code for the library is distributed under the terms of the
GNU General Public License, with the following exception:

	As a special exception, the copyright holders of this library give you
	permission to link this library with independent modules to produce an
	executable, regardless of the license terms of these independent modules,
	and to copy and distribute the resulting executable under terms of your
	choice, provided that you also meet, for each linked independent module,
	the terms and conditions of the license of that module.  An independent
	module is a module which is not derived from or based on this library.
	If you modify this library, you may extend this exception to your
	version of the library, but you are not obligated to do so.  If you do
	not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version. 

This exception is intended to be consistent with GNU Classpath
(http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/classpath.html).

Contributions are welcome.  You must release your code under the terms
of the GPL, and you must also agree to allow your code to be used with
the above exception.  For more information, see the file "HACKING".

Building the Library
--------------------

The "configure" script understands the following options:

    --with-pnet=DIR

        Specify the location of the Portable.NET source tree.
        It is assumed that this directory contains compiled versions
        of programs such as "cscc" and "resgen", which are used when
        building the library.

        If this option is not specified, then "configure" will look
        in "../pnet", and then along the path, for the programs that
        it needs.

        If "configure" does not find any evidence of Portable.NET
        on the system, it will look for Microsoft's tools instead.

    --with-mstools

        Force "configure" to use Microsoft tools, even if Portable.NET
        is installed on the same system.

When building under Windows, you will need to have Cygwin installed
to provide the GNU-compatible toolchain that the scripts and Makefile's
use.  Cygwin is available for download from "http://cygwin.redhat.com/".

Roadmap
-------

The directories contain the following:

    runtime    Implementation of the core classes that make up
               what Microsoft calls "mscorlib".
    doc        Documentation, including the list of native methods that
               a runtime engine must supply to use "runtime", and a
               set of coding guidelines for contributions.
    resources  Resource files for translatable strings in the library.
               There are subdirectories for each supported language.
    tools      Repository for random scripts used by the build system.
    csunit     Implementation of the unit test framework for pnetlib.
    tests      Individual unit tests for the classes in pnetlib.