[Mono-list] Cross-platform Mono IDE?

[Stefan Matthias Aust]

Fabio Montoya wrote:

 > I would like to explore the Mono environment especially now that Mac
 > OS X is somewhat supported.
 >
 > Any comments and opinions on free (or at least open) cross-platform
 > IDE tools (especially Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) will be appreciated.
 >
 > What's your favorite Mono IDE??
 >
 > What about Eclipse with C# plugin??

I'd love to have a C# plug-in for Eclipse - if it would have the same 
features as the JDT plug-in.  Currently, there's only a plug-in which is 
just an editor with syntax highlighting and which provides a way to call 
the compiler.  That's not enough to call it an IDE for C# IMHO.

A more useful plug-in would require incremental and partial compilation, 
underlining of problems while editing, quick fixing of common problems, 
support for refactoring, debugging, tool tips, code navigation, code 
completion, intelligent macros, automatic management of import (using) 
statements and so on.

As Java and C# are very similar, it might be possible to start with the 
JDT source code and change the built-in Java compiler to a C# compiler, 
adding then support for C# features not present in Java (like attributes 
or preprocessor instructions).  Basically, this would mean to create 
another C# compiler in Java. It might even be possible to keep the Java 
bytecode generator and get a C#->JVM translator for free.

I'd guess, that modifying the JDT to a CSDT is a major project, perhaps 
something you could do as a six months or one year project for 
university or so.

Besides the amount of work, some people might be annoyed by the fact, 
that this would have be done in Java instead of C# and would prefer a C# 
only solution.  However, Eclipse is a very powerful framework and IDE 
platform and it's probably better to add to that platform than to create 
something new from scratch.  I know, there's #develop and it might be 
easier to port that to gtk# and make it more portable, but it has none 
of the features which make Eclipse's JDT so powerful (IMHO of course). 
Therefore, there's room for both.


bye
-- 
Stefan Matthias Aust   //
www.3plus4software.de // Inter Deum Et Diabolum Semper Musica Est