[Mono-dev] Building mono on Windows issues.

[Alex J Lennon]

On 16/10/2014 12:38, Edward Ned Harvey (mono) wrote:
>> From: Alex J Lennon [mailto:ajlennon at dynamicdevices.co.uk]
>>
>>> Generally
>>> speaking, the only reasons to build on windows are because you want to
>>> debug the code, which is generally better done on mac/linux.  Or you're
>>> trying to accomplish something else, like obtain a specific DLL (such as
>>> Mono.Data.Sqlite)...  Which usually you can obtain some other way such as
>>> building on linux and then copying the DLL over to windows.
>> Agreed, but the the other reason is that you want to use a current Mono
>> yet nobody has gotten around to an official release of Mono for WIndows
>> since 3.2.3.
> Agreed, but that's the point - Why would you want to use Mono on windows?  The only reasons I know of are (a) you wish to debug the mono sources using Visual Studio, or (b) you wish to use one of Mono's assemblies in windows, such as Mono.Security, Mono.Data.Sqlite, etc.
>
> For case (a), at least for me, it's been easier to transition to Xamarin Studio or Monodevelop on mac/linux.
>
> For case (b) I was able to brainlessly copy Mono.Security.dll, and I struggled a little bit to copy Mono.Data.Sqlite.dll, but after a few tries, managed to get it right more easily than getting it to build natively on windows.
>
>

I guess different people will have different use-cases but this is ours
(which I don't think is so unique)

We develop software targetting Embedded Linux, Windows desktop/server
and Windows CE/Embedded Compact with .NET CF.

We use Visual Studio (plus Resharper as Bryan so rightly says - couldn't
get along without it) as we find this to be a productive development
environment.
In addition there is a lot of development resource out there with people
who know and are qualified on the VS toolchain.

Ideally we'd be write once and it'd just work whatever the platform or
framework, but the reality is we run into platform dependencies (SQLite
as you say, serial comms in the past), native dependencies and
configuration issues.

>From a productivity perspective and for risk management for testing and
deployment I wish to be able to develop and debug under Visual Studio
with Mono as a framework option.

I'd like to be able to do that with Mono on Windows as a check that no
issues come up between running on the .NET framework and running on Mono.

In addition I'd like to be able to remote debug to Embedded Linux with
Visual Studio - which  I used to be able to do with Xamarin's Monotools
Server before it disappeared.

I'm currently investigating a VS plugin to replace Monotools Server
which I've not had much luck with yet, but I'm optimistic:
https://github.com/DynamicDevices/monodebugvs

Cheers,

Alex