[Mono-list] Mono Debugger and ASP.NET

[Ben Joldersma]

Hello Mono folks,

First off, as ever, thank you so much and congratulations on excellent
work.  I love the new MonoDevelop alpha, and also love the very exciting
debugger screen shots I've been seeing.

As an ASP.NET developer, I am feeling a touch of self-pity at not being able
to share in the debugger fun.  Losing the debugger since making the
migration from Windows/.NET to Linux/Mono has unquestionably been the single
hardest aspect of the migration.  In many ways, it has made me a better
programmer, because I have been forced to think with a greater precision
about the quality of my code in lieu of depending on a debugger to solve my
code challenges for me.

That said, the time and cost savings inherent in the use of a debugger are
enormous (as I'm sure most of you can attest.)  We deal with enough projects
of enough complexity for customers, and our margins are tight enough that it
is just *hugely* difficult to run a viable .NET development shop while using
an environment w/o this important component.

I've heard that the problem is that the problem lies in xsp2's use of
multiple AppDomains.  What are the steps that need to take place to support
multiple AppDomains in the debugger?  Let me humbly say here that I know
*nothing* about the complexity and challenges related to this endeavor, and
fully respect the decision to this point.

Is this work that could be done by an outside programming team?  One that
does not have a deep understanding of the current debugger?  I could round
up some people with better understandings of debuggers than myself, but I
would need to know approximately how many hours of work would be involved in
the effort to try and negotiate a fair rate for such work (and perhaps
procure funds from other interested ASP.NET/Mono users).

ASP.NET is such a big part of .NET development at large.  I know that Mono
has a healthy and vibrant life inside linux GUI land and such.  But given
all the other great attention and love you've been giving to ASP.NET, in
terms of feature completion, code editors, etc., it's particularly painful
to not have this important tool.

Thanks for listening to my squeaky wheel. My apologies if I stepped on
anyone's toes in the process,
--
ben joldersma
software architect
http://skullsquad.com
[o]: 206.973.8003
[c]: 206.349.2852
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ximian.com/pipermail/mono-list/attachments/20080716/a5aa2e0e/attachment-0001.html