[Mono-dev] Hi Mono people

[Aaron Oxford]

Hello everyone.

<offtopic ramble="always">

I'm bombing you mailing list with this request because I am a nasty little 
Win32 programmer who knows virtually nothing about Linux. I'd like to get 
the Open Source project I'm working on to run under Linux, so I thought 
maybe you guys could help.

To be straight up and down from the outset: at this point I'm not 
interested in installing and learning about Linux. I've seen some stuff 
come and go in my time and although I know Linux is here to stay, I just 
don't have the time and energy to invest in learning a whole heap of new 
technologies - I do it at work and I do it for my project, that is enough! 
I need to gain enough information to get my project to work under Linux for 
the people who want it, nothing more. Learning Linux is on my list of 
Things To Do, just not near the top. :-)

OK so now you know a bit about me and where I'm coming from. I'm writing an 
audio application on SourceForge called VioLet Composer, and some people 
would like to see it working under Linux. OK, so here's what I know (it 
isn't much)...

1) The guts of my program, written in C# using basic Windows Forms, should 
work OK if someone were to convert it to a Mono project.
2) My audio routines, done with PortAudio, should be able to be replicated 
without me rewriting the whole app. I've got a C# binding for PortAudio 
that works under Windows, thanks to some cut and paste work and a friendly 
W32 OSS developer.

Now what I really need is someone who is enthusiastic about Linux, audio, 
and deployment, and has some spare time to work with me. Failing that, if 
someone could fill in the following enourmous blanks in my picture of the 
world:

1) What's the Linux equivalent of a DLL, and can they be written using 
Mono? Is there a Mono project to build PortAudio.dll for Linux?
2) What's the likely hood that naive statement #1 above is true? I haven't 
done anything fancy with web services or databases, just some controls that 
I paint myself and an audio output class (which was previously done with 
DirectX and in preparation for this has now been part-way converted to 
PortAudio).
3) How does one deploy for Linux these days? Do you all still run makefiles 
and stuff (groan...)? Does Mono have Linux equivalents for locations like 
$rootdrive:\$docs+settings\$current user\application data? (That would be 
/usr/$username/etc right?)

I guess really what I'm asking is, would anyone like to take my source and 
make it go under Linux, then tell me how they did it and what I need to do 
to make the fortnightly release. :-) Failing that bear with me while I ask 
a whole heap of dumb questions about installing Linux and Mono... :-D

</offtopic>

Hve a nice day,
Aaron.

PS You guys rock for making and using Mono in the first place. If you had 
only been a few months earlier I might have been doing this the right way 
from the start. :-)