[Mono-list] Mono 2.6 for Ubuntu

[Jeffrey Stedfast]

On 01/11/2010 03:42 PM, James Mansion wrote:
> B.R. wrote:
>   
>> It's not really up to Novell here, it's up to the Debian/Ubuntu 
>> maintainers to decide when new versions get supported. Part of the 
>> reason for this is that Debian, and by extension Ubuntu, have very 
>> specific policies on how things should be packaged (the Debian Free 
>> Software Guidelines are very strict, and the Mono project does violate 
>> them in a few places), and Novell simply haven't the resources to 
>> invest in hiring someone specifically to do Debian (and by extension 
>> Ubuntu) packaging, so it's left up to the maintainers who do a pretty 
>> good job with the time and resources they have. The reason binaries 
>> are shipped for Windows with every release is because there's no 
>> package specification to follow, so the binary packages are easy to 
>> build (build the libs, put them in the right places, package them up 
>> in an installer and you're good to go).
>>     
> I think that's a bit lame - it makes a big assumption about the mono 
> team shipping a package for a start. Binary compatibility for apps (if 
> not drivers) is at least passable with current Linux systems.  Why 
> should it be hard to ship a universal binary when Adobe and Sun (in 
> particular) have managed it for a long time?
>   

We used to make binary packages but they aren't upgradeable via the
distribution's package system. You really really want it to be
upgradeable via the package system and have the package system be aware
of the Mono installation, otherwise the system quickly becomes a mess. I
doubt you have the binary install of Java or OpenOffice on your machine.
I'm sure you've gotten them via the package manager from your distro.

There are people working on making Ubuntu packages (that also make the
official ubuntu/debian packages).

> I can see that Novell need SLES to be the best platform for Mono for 
> commercial, but I think it needs to be ubiquitous first and then given 
> value add on the Novell product - and that means better support for 
> other Linuxen, and OpenSolaris, and FreeBSD.
>   

We are always accepting patches to make it work better on other
platforms - there's no plot to make Mono work best on SLE (it's the same
Mono as on every other platform).

Jeff