[Mono-devel-list] Need help getting started

Wed Jul 9 12:45:52 EDT 2003

Hello Naveen and Jacob.

I have gone through the same pains as you guys.  Aside from Jacob's
excellent advice, I have this to offer:

0. - You will need to be logged in as 'root' user - this is the equivalent
of the ADMIN user in Windows.  You need to be root as the install process
will create folders etc.  I can't help you with this, however, a search in
Google for 'Enabling the root user' or 'how to log in as root' may yield
results.
1. You need to figure out how to start a terminal or console (I use the
terms interchangeably).  If you coming from a Microsoft background, then
this is the equivalent of choosing Start/Run/CMD to get an MS console open.
How to do that in Red Hat Linux is beyond me, as I have SuSE Linux.  I will
tell you how I do it: using Konqueror (roughly equivalent to Explorer), I
navigate to the folder I want to be in, and get a short cut menu by right
clicking the background of the Konqueror window.  There are many options on
the menu, but I would suggest that if your Linux distro is worth its money,
it will have an option for 'Start Terminal Here' or 'Start Console Here' or
similar.
2. Path names work differently. That is, they use / instead of \
3. To navigate in folders, use cd as you would in MS stuff.  However, to
move up one directory, you need to use cd .. (not cd..).  To list files, use
ls not dir.  Ok, so it is possible to set up aliases to these commands to
make them more MS DOS like, but that is beyond the scope of this session
here.  Note, pressing Tab key when typing path names may help to fill them
in for you, in an autocomplete kind of way.
4. Unpacking the RPM files.  Ok, so Jacob's advice is good below, however,
you may need to add ./ in there as follows: rpm -i ./mono-x.xx.rpm  However,
after unpacking the RPM's, you may wonder where the resultant files have
ended up.  In my case, they ended up as a series of files with extensions of
.tar.gz in /usr/src/packages/SOURCES.   These are kind of an equivalent to
Zip files - they are files that are archived together (that's the TAR part)
and then compressed (that's the GZ part).  You should have the tools already
installed to "unzip" these files - the commands to use are: tar -xzvf
myFile.tar.gz.  Do this for each of your tar.gz files.  Note: this process
should unpack your files to a series of folders with obvious names, in the
SOURCES folder listed earlier this paragraph.  IF you can't find them, user
your Explorer equivalent to do a search for *mono* etc
5. When you have the files you have produced, cd into them and type

./configure
make
make install

This will build and make the Mono stuff for you.  When I did mine, I needed
to build the garbage collector first (GC). If you have any problems, try
doing the ./configure, make, make install on all of them, then try them all
again.

It is possible that you may have dependency problems - Mono is expecting
something to be installed that isn't yet installed.  If this is the case,
make a note of what it is asking for, do a search on the web, and install
the relevant packages.  The process for installing them will be pretty much
the same as above, so hang on, you are nearly there.

In the meantime, if you have Netmeeting, I am willing to try to talk (or
type) your way though it all on 10 July.  Send me a mail if you want me to.
Hope this helps.

Jase

Regards,
Jason King
Profox Systems Ltd

-----Original Message-----
From: mono-devel-list-admin at lists.ximian.com
[mailto:mono-devel-list-admin at lists.ximian.com]On Behalf Of Jacob
Eggleston
Sent: 09 July 2003 15:35
To: Kohli, Naveen; 'mono-devel-list at lists.ximian.com'
Subject: Re: [Mono-devel-list] Need help getting started

Naveen,

Having just recently installed RedHat 7.3 for the
first time about a month ago to see what all the Mono
noise was about, I understand where you're comming
from. From experience, I can tell you that you are
probably going to become good friends with the search
button. : )

I never did come accross any "dummies" guide that I
could really understand. Linux is so different, and
everyone allways assumes you know what their talking
about when they say "just download the latest tarball
and run make and make install." Here is some of the
limited advice I can give you to help get you started.

- There are plenty of forums out there on general
Linux stuff. One that I used to get started was the
one at www.linuxiso.org. Whatever you do, don't just
post a question without searching for every word you
can think of that relates to your question. In
general, try to do as much research as possible, and
if you still get stuck, ask for help on a specific
problem, like: "I can't seem to get the mypackage.rpm
to install. Here is the command I'm running.... and
this is what happens." You'll get much more usefull
advice this way. It's probably also good advice for
posting to this mailing list.

- Download the following files from
http://www.go-mono.com/download.html (I'm assuming by
linux 9 you mean RH9)
mono-0.25-1.ximian.*.*.i386.rpm
mono-devel-0.25-1.ximian.*.*.i386.rpm
Someone correct me on this if I'm wrong, but it looks
like the garbage collector is included in these new
rpms. I upgraded from 0.24 using these two files, and
it worked fine. To install the rpms, open a command
prompt window and type something like this:
cd /home/user/monodownload/
rpm -i mono*.rpm
This will get the basic framework installed.

- To do ASP.NET, install the xsp mini web server. (I'm
currently only working on web stuff, so I can't tell
you what you would need for the GUI libraries to
work.) For instructions on installing it (there's no
rpms) search the forums on www.gotmono.com for "xsp
make install". Doing this the first time was kinda
scary, but it really is easier than it sounds.

At the start, there were moments when I wanted to
throw my computer out the window and take a vow never
to touch Linux again. It was worth it though.

Regards,
-Jacob

--- "Kohli, Naveen" <NKohli at CriticalSites.com> wrote:
> I am trying to start development of .Net apps on
> Linux 9.0. Could someone
> point me to some resource that could explain how to
> set up the framework on
> Linux system. I am not very familiar with Linux OS
> and how apps are
> installed on it. I tried to go through the docs from
> web site, but could not
> make much out of it. I am looking for some dummies
> kind of document that
> explains it.
>
> Thanks.
>

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