[Mono-list] Mono 2.2 Linux installer?

[Miguel De Icaza]

Hello,

> Since day one, going back to release 1.2.6, I've always been utterly
> dependent on the mono installer.
> http://ftp.novell.com/pub/mono/archive/1.9.1/linux-installer/2/mono-1.9.1_2-installer.bin
>
> Will there be a linux-installer for 2.2?

We are not planning on bringing back the Linux installer for Mono.

The reasons were articulated in the past by our QA team.

The problem is that the installer would not work on systems that had  
different shared libraries installed in the system, and this spanned  
both the Gtk# stack as well as the Windows.Forms stack and we might  
even had problems with System.Drawing depending on the system.

They were causing a lot of people to get a bad impression on Mono for  
things that were outside of our control (without us basically shipping  
replacement for all of these libraries).   The problems ranged from  
unexpected behaviors to programs crashing due to old libraries to  
exceptions that would not occur on the system the developers had  
tested on.

So we gave up on having a single binary that worked across Linux  
systems, we just could not guarantee its stability.

> I know this isn't the recommended or preferred method, but I'm  
> currently
> making a case for mono in a RedHat/Corporate setting.
>
> 1. I don't have root. I'll never get root. The RPMs require root so  
> this
> isn't an option. Ditto for yum. Every recommended install option  
> writes to
> directories to which I don't have access.

In this scenario, you should build Mono from source code, it is very  
easy, each set of release notes contains the list of instructions to  
build Mono, and it will work from your home directory.

> 2. In the past I've downloaded the source, and compiled it. I've had  
> mixed
> success with this, but the complexities of getting everything compiled
> compromises my trust in the output. To clarify, the source tarballs  
> are
> fine. Its just that I'm operating in an environment with a lot of  
> extra
> hurdles.

You can run the test suite to ensure that everything is OK once you  
have done your source code installation, and you could augment this  
with your own tests to ensure that things work.

As things stand right now, if you got the installer, chances are many  
tests would fail.

Miguel.

>
>
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