[Mono-list] Advice Needed / Cross-Platform Server Application

[Edward Ned Harvey (mono)]

> From: mono-list-bounces at lists.ximian.com [mailto:mono-list-
> bounces at lists.ximian.com] On Behalf Of Greg Deward
> 
> 	... he found success outside to SUSE (the interwebs claim this SUSE is
> preferred by some)
> 	... he chose Visual Studio instead of MonoDevelop or Xamanian's tool

We use Visual Studio for most development.  Debug on mac with MonoDevelop (now called Xamarin Studio).  By designing MVC, the model and controller can be used cross-platform, with usually little or no changes.  We develop the GUI separately on each platform, which means, it's worth while to pay Xamarin for Xamarin.Mac and android and iOS.

The reason Suse has at least historically been preferred, was because of the Suse/Novell connection.  But since Novell is no more, that's less of a thing nowadays.

Nowadays, RHEL/Centos ships with an ancient version of mono.  So I uninstall the rpm if any, and then build from source.  I have been extremely pleased with the ease of building - literally ./configure && make && sudo make install has worked every time for me.  (Although it takes like 45 minutes.)

The state of mono on debian/ubuntu is quite good.  Apt ships with recent versions.


> 	b. Is there a benefit to using one IDE over another?

Generally speaking, VS is the best.  However, you do most of your stuff on VS, and then you want to debug on a different platform, MonoDevelop or XamarinStudio (paid or free) is best.


> 	d. Is anyone using any commercial SDKs successfully (Telerik,
> Infragistics, Syncfusion, etc.)?

We use various libraries - json.net, bcrypt, lz4sharp, etc.

I have constantly benchmarked a whole bunch of things on .Net and also on mono.  Do it with and without optimization.  The shocking result is that all 4 outcomes are sometimes best and worst.   Sometimes mono is better, sometimes .Net is better, and sometimes when you toggle optimization, the results toggle too.