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

Sat May 19 05:05:31 UTC 2012

Hi Miguel, mono-devel subscribers,

Thanks Miguel, your description helped me figure out a couple of key things. I'm gradually getting on top of the mcs/class  build process and its translation to VS solutions/projects. There was already a lot of prior work done by Sebastien Pouliot (I think) a few years ago.

One thing I came across is that the project for "corlib-build" builds if targeting .Net 2.0, but fails on .NET 4.0 with a few errors such as follows. The only related issue I found (https://github.com/nikhilk/scriptsharp/issues/156) suggests that .NET4.5 may be the issue. Any advice on handling this is welcome. I need to add project dependencies on a couple of outputs from the "basic" profile to overcome the issue and still target 4.0. However I do not like the departure from the cygwin build process.

The type 'System.Diagnostics.TextWriterTraceListener' is defined in an assembly that is not referenced. You must add a reference to assembly 'System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089'.                C:\src\mono\mono\mcs\class\corlib\System.Diagnostics\ConditionalAttribute.cs         35           11           corlib-build
The type 'System.Collections.Generic.ISet`1<T0>' is defined in an assembly that is not referenced. You must add a reference to assembly 'System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089'.                C:\src\mono\mono\mcs\class\corlib\System.Collections.Generic\CollectionDebuggerView.cs               32           11                corlib-build

Cheers,
J-M

From: Miguel Mudge [mailto:michael.mudge at welchallyn.com]
Sent: Saturday, 12 May 2012 12:34 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

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<http://MS.NET> libraries it defaults to, but the 'build' phase fails both with dependencies on the basic system or the MS.NET<http://MS.NET> libraries (missing implementations or ambiguous references). Well done for you to sort it all out.

Our build uses *none* of the MS.NET<http://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<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<mailto: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<tel:315-554-4057> | michael.mudge at welchallyn.com<mailto:michael.mudge at welchallyn.com>

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