[Mono-list] Mono builds for Linux

[Timotheus Pokorra]

Hello,

I read this morning that there was a discussion on IRC about Linux and
Windows builds last night.

The page
http://www.go-mono.com/mono-downloads/download.html
offers downloads for Windows, Linux and Mac, but only the Mac version
seems to be updated quickly.

I cannot say anything about Windows builds.

But the argument regarding Linux builds went into this direction on IRC:
It is too much work to build Mono for every conceivable distribution,
and manual steps of uploading are involved, etc.
The suggestion was to either use the Mono that is part of the
distribution, or build it yourself.

I think that is not an option for everyone. Some distributions are
slow in building Mono, which means you are stuck with an old version.
And people should not be burdened to build their own Mono.

I have made good experience with the OpenSUSE build service.
I have been building the latest stable Mono and MonoDevelop for the
past months, for several of the mainstream Linux distributions.
The main effort usually was to get the current tarball to build at
all. I have had no problems with building for the various
distributions, once the package files were in place.

Here are the links that I have posted before on this list:
http://www.pokorra.de/2013/12/building-the-latest-mono-and-monodevelop-on-obs/
http://www.pokorra.de/2013/12/easy-installation-of-current-mono-and-monodevelop-for-all-major-linux-distributions/

I wonder if someone else wants to do this officially for the Mono
team, or if my builds could become somehow official. I am happy to
help clarify the process that I use to build the packages. It is
already a transparent process, since all parameters are public on the
OpenBuild Service.

I read in this comment that Xamarin encourages the community to
provide support for Linux:
http://mikemdblog.blogspot.de/2013/09/how-to-set-up-monodevelop-on-linux.html?showComment=1378643747759#c4019833196943293574

If you would want to put a link from the Mono and MonoDevelop
downloads page to my or someone elses Download repository, that would
certainly help the Linux community!

Here are the links:
http://software.opensuse.org/download/package?project=home:tpokorra:mono&package=monodevelop-opt
http://software.opensuse.org/download/package?project=home:tpokorra:mono&package=mono-opt

Alternatively, for just Ubuntu builds, there is the work by Eberhard:
https://launchpad.net/~ermshiperete/+archive/monodevelop

Thanks,
  Timotheus