[Mono-dev] Building Mono on Windows - And Having a Windows Installer again

[Edward Ned Harvey (mono)]

> From: mono-devel-list-bounces at lists.ximian.com [mailto:mono-devel-list-
> bounces at lists.ximian.com] On Behalf Of Daniel Morgan
> 
> I see the latest version of Mono's Windows installer is 3.2.3.  Can this be used
> to build the latest from git?
> 
> I see a link for binaries for 3.4.0, but they are not official binaries.
> 
> I am going to try build Mono on Windows using Cygwin.  Not sure how web
> the visual studio stuff works.

Search this list for Appveyor.  I know Alex Lennon was putting some effort in, and I think got to the point of having a reliable automated build process - but check with folks to be sure (I haven't followed very closely and I could be wrong).  At some point, Miguel pulled Duncan Mak into the conversation, so I would guess maybe Duncan is involved with distributing windows builds...  All of this occurred within the last ~ 1 month or so.


> Also, what is the best Linux distro to build mono?  OpenSUSE?  Debian,
> Ubuntu?  It has been awhile for me.  Not starting a flame war here - just
> wanting the easiest route to get the dependencies on linux  in order to build
> the latest mono from git.

On basically any system I've seen so far, building is easy.  The basic process of "./configure && make && make install" usually works.  If it doesn't, then add "make get-monolite-latest" before "make EXTERNAL_MCS=..."  as below...

On every redhat-based or debian-based (or even mac) system I've ever used, one of these two variants has always worked.

OSX
export BUILDDIR=/Users/whatever/Projects/mono-build
export NUMPROC=3 ; time ( test -d $BUILDDIR && rm -rf $BUILDDIR ; mkdir -p $BUILDDIR ; ./autogen.sh --prefix=$BUILDDIR --disable-bcl-opt --enable-nls=no && make -j $NUMPROC && make install && echo "" && echo "    Done" && echo "")

Ubuntu 14.04
export BUILDDIR=/home/whatever/Projects/mono-build
export NUMPROC=3 ; time ( test -d $BUILDDIR && rm -rf $BUILDDIR ; mkdir -p $BUILDDIR ; ./autogen.sh --prefix=$BUILDDIR --disable-bcl-opt --enable-nls=no && make get-monolite-latest && make -j $NUMPROC EXTERNAL_MCS="${PWD}/mcs/class/lib/monolite/gmcs.exe" && make install && echo "" && echo "    Done" && echo "")


> And I want to play with MonoDevelop too, but Mono comes first.

Building monodevelop is more difficult.  I've never succeeded - but I never spent a boat load of time on it either.  You can install MonoDevelop on the mac, no problem (they distribute a pre-built binary).  Also, the latest ubuntu includes a recent build of monodevelop.  I personally use VS on windows, XS on mac, and MD on ubuntu 14.04 desktop x86_64.