[Mono-list] Re: [Gtk-sharp-list] Dos window - when launchapponWin32 OS - how to remove it ?

Jonathan Gilbert 2a5gjx302 at sneakemail.com
Sat Jul 16 20:48:57 EDT 2005


At 10:20 PM 15/07/2005 +0200, Kornel wrote:
>>Does this mean that using mono on windos will imply to have allways a
>>dos box, no matter the value used for the /target option?
>
>Yes, all the things I have written means this single fact.:) The console
>window is dependent on the executable used to create the process (mono.exe
>in this case) rather than the managed exe that is loaded by mono.exe
>
>>Does this also mean that in the future, mono runtime on windows will
>>allways generate a dos box withtout being a bug, according to your
>>description?
>
>This is not a bug because this is by design.:)

I don't think anyone actively made a design decision to always display a
console window for the mono process. I think it probably was considered,
but I would call it more a "design concession". Mono aims for seamless
compatibility, to the extent that it is possible, with MS .NET, and this
issue should not, I think, be an exception.

>Normally this nice solution could be used on Windows XP and 2003 and the
>ugly FreeConsole sholution could be used on earlier Windows' but the problem
>is that mono.exe itself has to be marked with different subsystem and thus
>this would require two separate mono.exe that is a bad solution.

For what it's worth, Java on Windows has two separate interpreter binaries.
'java.exe' attaches to the console (i.e., specifies the console subsystem
in the header), while 'javaw.exe' detaches from the console (i.e.,
specifies the Windows subsystem). This also has two executables, but
doesn't try to do any hackery involving AttachConsole and/or FreeConsole.
I'm certainly not in the camp that believes mono should blindly copy Java
in every aspect, but the people at Sun researched this problem as well and
weighed the alternatives and this is what they came up with. It makes sense
to me :-)

>There is some explanation by someone else:
>http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/02/CQA/#QA3
>
>Note that he suggest to use a com and an exe file but I think this is a more
>lame solution that calling FreeConsole.

I haven't read the article, but I agree that anything that uses COM files
as containers for PE images is horrifically ugly. :-)

Jonathan Gilbert


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