[Mono-dev] Compiling Mono with Visual Studio and .pdb files

Miguel Mudge michael.mudge at welchallyn.com
Fri May 11 14:34:09 UTC 2012


>
> Making progress with msvc, with a lot of second guessing, but I cannot
> seem to fully get out of the circular dependencies easily. After fixing a
> few things, there seems to be a two to three stage build process (‘basic’,
> ‘build’ and, well, the huge rest). I can build the ‘basic’ stuff with
> references being the MS.NET libraries it defaults to, but the ‘build’
> phase fails both with dependencies on the basic system or the MS.NETlibraries (missing implementations or ambiguous references). Well done for
> you to sort it all out.
>

Our build uses *none* of the MS.NET libraries - every project *only*
depends on other projects in the same Mono solution file.  All of the
projects reference the mscorlib project built in that solution, *never*
Microsoft's mscorlib.dll (see Project Properties -> Build -> Advanced ->
"Do not reference mscorlib.dll").

mscorlib has these compilation symbols: INSIDE_CORLIB LIBC NET_1_1 NET_2_0
NET_3_0 NET_3_5 NET_4_0
And it has a few links to external files: Aes.cs, Consts.cs, Locale.cs,
MonoTODOAttribute.cs, SemaphoreFullException,
TimeZoneInfo.AdjustmentRule.cs, TimeZoneInfo.Android.cs, TimeZoneInfo.cs,
TimeZoneInfo.TransitionTime.cs.
We were able to determine most of those files by looking at
corlib.dll.sources - definitely look at the .sources files for the other
DLLs too... although it's better to look at the Linux build in-action.

You should be able to build mscorlib with the above info.  Here is the info
for system (notice the dash, as in "minus"):

System -XML -Config: LIBC NET_1_1 NET_2_0 NET_3_0 NET_3_5 NET_4_0
CONFIGURATION_2_0
Depends on: mscorlib project

System.Xml then depends on the above.

System -Config: LIBC NET_1_1 NET_2_0 NET_3_0 NET_3_5 NET_4_0
CONFIGURATION_2_0 XML_DEP
Depends on: mscorlib project, System.Xml project

Mono.Security then depends on mscorlib and System -Config
Mono.Configuration then depends on mscorlib, System.Xml and System -Config

System: LIBC NET_1_1 NET_2_0 NET_3_0 NET_3_5 NET_4_0  CONFIGURATION_2_0
CONFIGURATION_DEP XML_DEP SECURITY_DEP
Depends on: mscorlib, System.Xml, System.Configuration, Mono.Security

Don't trust the above though - I think there's a missing step, there may
need to be 4 builds of System (one before XML_DEP is added, one before
SECURITY_DEP is added, one before CONFIGURATION_DEP is added, then the
final build with all 3 constants added).

The best thing to do is compile mcs in Linux and gather this information:
- The order in which each library is built - including if it is built
multiple times.
- What dependencies each build has.
- What compile-time constants are set.
- What files are a part of the build.

I would definitely add you to my list of super-cool people if you
duplicated / modified the Linux build process to capture the above 4 things
to generate a working MSVC solution - it's just XML files, an xslt might do
this well.  I'm sure the Mono folks would be happy to include the output of
such a process in each source release to make it easier on us MSVC-centric
folks.

- Kipp

It sounds like your approach is similar to that in the ‘msvc’ folder and
> related makefile targets, but I probably miss many details. I found that I
> could run the make targets generating csproj files only after a successful
> ‘make’ on cygwin, using anciliary files (.response) from the call to
> ‘make’. I wonder how similar to what you describe this is. My question may
> be naive, but what do you mean by compiler constants, build order and files
> used? Are you post-processing the captured output redirected to a file?
>
> ** **
>
> I never really had to do much with makefiles, and with a codebase the size
> of Mono, this is a steep learning curve.****
>
> ** **
>
> Cheers,****
>
> J-M****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* Miguel Mudge [mailto:michael.mudge at welchallyn.com]
> *Sent:* Tuesday, 8 May 2012 12:30 AM
> *To:* Perraud, Jean-Michel (CLW, Black Mountain)
> *Cc:* mono-devel-list at lists.ximian.com
> *Subject:* Re: [Mono-dev] Compiling Mono with Visual Studio and .pdb files
> ****
>
> ** **
>
> We've been building the 2.10.2 Mono framework libraries in Visual Studio.
>  We performed a build on Linux, copied the compiler constants, build order
> and files used, and use this information to create the Visual Studio
> project - we did not start from Mono's msvc.  It was a very manual process,
> but I am pleased with the output.****
>
> ** **
>
> We don't compile all of the libraries since our embedded device doesn't
> have the space.  Most of the difficulty is in the roots anyways - for
> example, we have several System.dll projects, which are incrementally more
> dependent, in order to solve circular dependency problems.  Picture
> attached:****
>
> ** **
>
> It seems like the only way to reliably "copy" the build process into MSVC
> is to actually run the mcs make.  You might be able to hack it a bit to
> mock a build, grab the compile flags/files and then generate msvc files
> from that.****
>
> ** **
>
> Thanks,****
>
> Michael "Kipp" Mudge | Welch Allyn | Lead Software Engineer****
>
> 315-554-4057 | michael.mudge at welchallyn.com****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
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