[Mono-list] The Mono Crisis

[Ralph Mason]

Dear Mono Team

I believe that Mono has a very large problem.

It lacks a workable debugger of any kind - Yes I know there is this 
method and that method that you 'can' use but they all suck. They don't 
build or they need this and that, but no one can actually nail down 
exactly what this and that is.

We have been diligently trying to use mono for about 6 month or more and 
have tried basically every permutation of debuggers, library versions, 
NPTL no NPTL this kernel that kernel, this garbage collector, that one, 
none at all,  gdb etc etc (This whole freezing up NTPL / GC problem and 
the way that the problem is not recognized as a problem is the second 
largest problem I have with mono)

There are plenty of other bugs in mono that we run into,  that we (our 
team here) could no doubt  fix but with no debugger it's such a long 
expensive process that it's just not worth it.

Mono Needs a STABLE debugger that will build and run on ANY system.  The 
debugger needs to be able to step into interop libraries (or have some 
way to debug both at once);

Once this happens I think mono will be at version 1.0.  Until that time 
it isn't IMHO. (WriteLine isn't a debugger it may have been in 1969)

Before there is any .NET2.0 support, before anything else you need to be 
able to set a break point, single step through code and look at variable 
contents.  Reliably on any machine with any code.

This single thing will give the most major boost to mono of any possible 
code that could be written. Mono is a great piece of work, but it's 
being totally let down. 

While I don't have the ability to write a debugger for Mono There are 
plenty of other ways I could help - if only there was a debugger.

Can anyone make this happen?  Miguel?


Thanks for listening,
Ralph