[Mono-list] Re: [Mono-devel-list] Mono on Windows Primer?

[Francisco T. Martinez]

Craig Dayton wrote:

>Now that I've installed Mono 1.0.1 on Windows using the installer package,
>its not apparent from the documentation on how to start using Mono.
>
>Does anyone have Mono working on Windows?  If so, could you give me a kick
>start.
>
>Thanks, Craig
>
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>Mono-devel-list mailing list
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>  
>
For the most part developing applications and solutions for Mono in 
Win32 is not that different if any than developing applications using 
the Microsoft .NET Framework SDK.  In fact, a lot of the samples in the 
MS SDK should compile and build without much problems.

There are some differences between both SDKs.  There are tools available 
in Mono that are none existent in the Microsoft SDK, for example we use 
mcs.exe as the C# compiler, we have monop which creates stdout output of 
the description of a given assembly.  Mono also has its own Global 
Assembly Cache and this is not shared with the Microsoft GAC.

There are also technologies that are very closely associated with Mono 
and are just now becoming more common place in the Windows world like is 
the case for Gtk# a GUI toolkit based on GTK+ technology.

The Microsoft Framework Class Library (FCL) does not include some of the 
great offerings that the Mono FCL has such as Mono.GetOptions or the 
Novell.Directory.Ldap assembly.

Thanks to contributors like Daniel Morgan, there has been a Mono 
presence in the Win32 world even in earliest releases before going 1.0.  
However, Mono has seen a lot of use and development in OS platforms like 
Linux were developers are very comfortable with command line compilation 
and source code editing with text editors like vim and EMACS were the 
majority of Windows business application development has generally been 
done in richer integrated development environments geared towards rapid 
application development.  In non Windows OS platforms there has also 
been a proliferation of IDE development such as MonoDevelop (an awesome 
community led IDE) and Eclipse enrich with C# plug-ins.

There is a recent push to mature or rather enhance the Mono development 
experience for those programmers using Microsoft Windows as their OS.  
There are now projects to generate Makefiles from Visual Studio C# 
solutions and projects or create mirror solutions and/or projects for 
MonoDevelop, Microsoft Help 2.0 versions of Gtk# library documentation, 
and preliminary work Visual Studio .NET 2003 Add-ins aimed specifically 
at testing and simplifying the deployment of projects build for/with MS 
.NET Framework tools.  The future may also hold plug-ins and add-ins for 
GPL licensed Win32 IDEs like #Develop.

So before I give you a list of links to help you make sense of it all, 
keep in mind that for the most part, when you develop for MS .NET you 
are developing for Mono :)

A good place to look and learn Mono is in the Mono Handbook section of 
the Mono web based documentation:

http://www.go-mono.com/docs/index.aspx

Very new tutorials and/or HowTo guides are at: (check out the links for 
"Getting Started")
http://www.monotropa.net/MonoTropa/MonoTropa.html

Useful links to Mono resources with Win32 overtones:

http://www.mfconsulting.com/blog
http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/?prj2make-sharp
http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/?gtks-inst4win
http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/?monowin32

Finally, I think that you may find a lot of replies to a "how do I get 
started" kind of question in the Mono-list which is the general 
discussion about Mono mailing list 
(http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-list).

Paco