What's the best setup for Mono development on Windows?

What's the best setup for Mono development on Windows?

"I started trying to play with Mono, mostly for fun at the moment. I first tried to use the Visual Studio plugin that will convert a csproj into a makefile, but there seemed to be no version available for Visual Studio 2005. I also read about the MonoDevelop IDE, which sounded nice. Unfortunately, there's no pre-fab Windows package for it. I tried to follow some instructions to build it by combining dependencies from other semi-related installs. It didn't work, but that's probably because I'm a Windows-oriented guy and can barely spell ""makefile"".

So, my question is this: What's the lowest-energy way to get up and running to try some Mono-based development on Windows?"

Asked by: Guest | Views: 487

Total answers/comments: 4

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Guest [Entry]

"I'd recommend getting VMWare Player and using the free Mono development platform image that is provided on the website.

Download Mono

Setup time for this will be minimal, and it will also allow you to get your code working in .NET and then focus on porting issues without a massive hassle of switching machines and the like. the VMWare Player tools will allow you to simply drag and drop the files over to copy them.

I'm looking to take a couple of my .NET apps and make them Mono compliant, and this is the path I'm going to take here shortly."

Guest [Entry]

A year later and the answer to this has change greatly. You can now use MonoDevelop on Windows, or if you are more comfortable in Visual Studio you can use the Visual Studio Tools to write everything and then debug on in VM to make sure it is working on Linux.

Guest [Entry]

"@Chris I have found that Visual Studio is the best IDE for developing against .NET -- I think the best way to target Mono is really just to develop and build in Visual Studio under Windows then just run those binaries directly on Linux (or whatever other Mono platform you are using). There are free versions of Visual Studio if licensing is a concern. If you are developing under Linux, the best software is probably Eclipse with a Mono plugin (see The Mono Handbook - Eclipse for installation instructions) but keep in mind it doesn't have near the amount of features or language integration Visual Studio has.

@modesty Mono is a 3rd party open source implementation of the .NET framework which allows you to run .NET applications on platforms other than Windows."

Guest [Entry]

One of the best things you can do if developing with Visual Studio for Mono is to get MoMA http://www.mono-project.com/MoMA. This will inspect any number of assemblies that you build and generate a report showing potential Mono problems (e.g., methods not implemented in the mono library). It can be run from a GUI or the command line for use in automated builds.