Embedding Mono in Delphi Win32

Question

Does anyone know the specifics of how to embed the Mono runtime in a Delphi Win32 application? The official documentations is not very helpful with regards to the Win32 environment (www.mono-project.com/Embedding_Mono).

Update:

I am very familiar with the vagaries of static linking in Delphi and would be perfectly happy with a DLL. Mono itself has dependencies so one more DLL is really no big deal. The comment about FPU control word is one of my concerns since I believe the CG default settings are different than Microsoft tools. Here is what I believe is needed:

• Header translation from "C" to Delphi (probably not too hard)
• Compilation of the Mono DLL (is the one shipped with Mono usable?)
• A better understanding of FPU control word goctha's (hopefully none)
• Some feedback from someone that has the battle scars from having tried this stunt ;)

Update (6-12-2011):

In case anyone is interested, I just found a project on Google Code for embedding Mono in a Delphi application:

monoemb4delphi

Answer 1

Mono seems to be buildable with mingw, allthough most references I found crosscompiled from Linux, e.g. http://www.mono-project.com/Cross-compiling_Mono_for_Windows

I'd say your first priority is searching for a libmono dll that

• doesn't use cygwin (trust me)
• is known to work, also outside mingw (avoid possible mingw specific C++ mangling if C++ is used)
• Preferably comes with a readable header.

If you find or build it as DLL (to satisfy mghie's correct remark), write a header (like Stijn suggests) it could work.

It won't be trivial though, VMs are not exactly trivial beasts, and expect problems in the usual cross-language problem domains: library initialization (order), FPU exception mask and exception handling in general. Partially that is also why I said "know to work outside of mingw", studying how it is interfaced in other compilers might give pointers how to properly tackle this.

Note that the mono tutorial has a mono lib initializer, but that doesn't mean that all the libs that mono uses are properly initialized. Specially mingw's libc might need initialization, since they are normally initialized via ctors. My (very initial) mingw glue code is here:

http://svn.freepascal.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/trunk/ide/fpmingw.pas?view=markup

On the other hand, in a DLL it might be initialized via a DLL initialization routine.

I myself have been able to build GDB as a lib and use it (statically in FPC though, I didn't have the motivation to make a DLL since that was an option)

Note that if you really have to do this yourself this is NOT an easy way.

Answer 2

This article by Rudy Velthuis shows an example how to link a C lib to Delphi. With a bit of work it should be possible to access mono_jit_init from Delphi using this technique.

Answer 3

You might want to take a look at http://www.remobjects.com/hydra.aspx.