[Mono-devel-list] porting SharpDevelop

[Steve Deobald]

On Sun, 2004-07-04 at 18:21, Carter Smithhart wrote:
> > You have heard about monodevelop (website: http://www.monodevelop.com)
> > right?
> > 
> > --Todd
> 
> Yeah.. I played around with it for a bit.. It doesn't have a GUI builder
> embedded within yet, so I thought I'd look around for another way.
> Another reason I looked elsewhere is because I was looking for a GUI
> builder that generates code using the System.Windows.Forms namespace. I
> guess I also wanted some experience with what "porting" a C# app would
> be like.

Ha ha! Interesting way to go about it, I guess. :)

You might want to have a look at mono's System.Windows.Forms (SWF)
implementation before you try to make this journey. It's actually broken
at the moment, and the process of re-writing it has just recently begun.

The other thing you may want to look at is GTK#. It would probably
require less effort to port any SWF app to GTK# (as the MonoDevelop team
has done with SharpDevelop) than trying to piece together broken pieces
of SWF. I would recommend finding a much smaller SWF app, and porting
that to GTK# to familiarize yourself with the API. Then, if you're
looking for features in MonoDevelop which haven't been added yet,
perhaps you could give the team a hand? :) The amount they've
accomplished in MonoDevelop's short lifespan is almost unfathomable:
teams at various companies are already using MonoDevelop for enterprise
application development, which speaks volumes about the work done so
far. I think it's a project worth contributing to.

-- 
Steve Deobald
Software Architect
www.citygroup.ca
www.cityhost.ca