[Mono-osx] [MonoDevelop] State of MonoDevelop on the Mac

[Bart Masschelein]

>
Hi,

> Is it possible to build monodevelop from svn/source on a 10.5 box? If
> so, are there any documented steps for doing so?
>

Yes, it is possible. I wrote a post (http://blog.naiznoiz.com/2008/10/compiling-monodevelop-on-osx 
) describing exactly that, using MacPorts. It is a post from the end  
of December, using the svn at that time. I'm not sure if it still  
works. And in the short future, I have no intention to confirm this,  
which brings me to my next point...

> Of course, if this is just crazy talk, and there are just too many
> issues building on os/x, tell me know and I will return to my rock
> under the bridge...   :)
>

... that's what I did in the end. MonoDevelop is a great IDE, with a  
lot of potential to become the Visual Studio for Mac and Linux, and  
that's a good thing. So after I noticed a feature I liked was only  
available at the trunk, I choose to get deep down and dirty (again),  
with compiling MonoDevelop from svn. It works, as I described. But  
then I found I also needed Mono from svn, and hup, there I went. But  
then I had problems with the MonoDevelop, and so on, and so on. After  
several weeks of compiling, checking out, MacPorting, and what else, I  
gave up. I took my old VmWare (that I quited, because XP runs bulky in  
it), installed Windows 7 Beta, Visual Studio Express, and started from  
scratch. And I can assure you, in a couple of days I programmed what I  
wanted, where with Mono, I never really got off.

In that time, I reported several bug fixes which were solved promptly,  
the support is great, to say the least (mailing list, irc, ...), and  
it feels good to be part of it, if only reporting bugs. But at a point  
you have to decide if you go all the way, and fix bugs yourself, or if  
you want to go after your own project. And without any doubt,  
programming in Visual Studio is much more productive then currently in  
MonoDevelop. Time is limited, and is has to be fun.

Be sure I'll be checking every release version that comes with an  
installer, to see if my program runs on Linux and Mac. And as there  
are patterns everywhere, in nature, in a couple of months I will  
absolutely need that specific feature from svn, and the next cycle  
will start ;-).

An OSX package of the latest unstable versions would be great ;-).

Keep up the good work!

Cheers,

Bart

>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2009 09:14:19 -0600
> From: Bryan Murphy <bmurphy1976 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Mono-osx] [MonoDevelop] State of MonoDevelop on the Mac
> To: Michael Hutchinson <m.j.hutchinson at gmail.com>
> Cc: MonoDevelop List <Monodevelop-list at lists.ximian.com>,
> 	monodevelop-devel-list
> <Monodevelop-devel-list at lists.ximian.com>,
> 	mono-osx at lists.ximian.com
> Message-ID:
> 	<7fd310d10902210714o2c376432le321495d6533678d at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 3:21 AM, Michael Hutchinson
> <m.j.hutchinson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> I've been fixing up the Mac MD in the last few days, trying to
>> identify what needs to be resolved to polish it up.
>
> I can't help you much with the key bindings.  I find my mac to be
> infuriatingly inconsistent when it comes to key bindings across
> applications, so I don't know what the "correct" bindings are really
> supposed to be anyway.  Windows is far more consistent.
>
> That being said, your list looks very good.  There are a few things
> I've noticed that bother me:
>
> * Window drawing/refresh issues (as you mentioned, but they are very
> bad right now)
>
> * In tree views and menus, your current item doesn't always highlight
> (probably related to the window refresh issue)
>
> * Dialog boxes open in the upper left corner of the screen.  This is
> annoying because I have my dock on the left and the dialogs always
> appear under the dock.
>
> * I had to delete my ~/.config/MonoDevelop folder to get this build to
> load.  Before I did that, I was getting the following error on
> startup: LSOpenFromURLSpec() failed with error -10810
>
> I only downloaded the newest build last night.  I haven't looked at
> MonoDevelop on mac in months so I'll post more as I re-familiarize
> myself with it and use it.
>
> Bryan
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:02:58 +0100
> From: Nicholas Francis <Nicholas at unity3d.com>
> Subject: Re: [Mono-osx] [MonoDevelop] State of MonoDevelop on the Mac
> To: Michael Hutchinson <m.j.hutchinson at gmail.com>
> Cc: MonoDevelop List <Monodevelop-list at lists.ximian.com>,
> 	monodevelop-devel-list
> <Monodevelop-devel-list at lists.ximian.com>,
> 	mono-osx at lists.ximian.com
> Message-ID: <BEB04D13-3DAE-481F-9B98-89A0BD80072D at unity3d.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes
>
> Hi Michael.
>
> Your bug list sort-of matches what I've noticed.
>
> I'm the lead UI guy from Unity - We are currently moving Unity from
> Mac-only to Mac and PC, so we've actually gone through the process of
>
> picking our brains about everything that was natural to Mac users.
> After we ship WindowsUnity (soon, I pray), I'd love to help out with
> doing some keybindings to make it feel nice for a Machead (after all,
>
> I did our text editing system, so I have our keymapping tables for
> text editing).
>
> In general we're very open to figuring out how we make sure that
> MonoDevelop becomes a great app on Mac.
>
> Cheers,
> Nicholas
>
> On 21/02/2009, at 10.21, Michael Hutchinson wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> I've been fixing up the Mac MD in the last few days, trying to
>> identify what needs to be resolved to polish it up.
>>
>> I've set up a minimal bit of dock and menu integration (click on
> dock
>> to unminimise, fix the dock quit command, that sort of thing), fixed
>> the pkgconfig lookup (so all the Mono packages, including GTK# show
>> up), and tidied up the configure scripts. On the build side, I set
> up
>> the makefiles so that I can easily generate a MonoDevelop.app.zip
> file
>> on Linux, which can be downloaded and run directly. I also made sure
>> it's easy to build and run MD from SVN from within MD on the Mac
> (open
>> & hit "run").
>>
>> Encouraging progress, maybe, but there's still much to be done. The
> MD
>> team isn't going to work on this for the upcoming 2.0 release, since
>> we're focusing on Linux stability. The 2.0 release for OS X will
> still
>> be a preview. After 2.0 we will be able to focus more on improving
> the
>> usability and stability of MonoDevelop on the Mac and Windows.
>>
>> A lot of this, especially key binding stuff, cannot easily be done
> by
>> those of us who are not Mac users, as we just don't know how typical
>> Mac keybindings are expected to *feel*. Help and advice from Mac
>> developers would be much appreciated. Even if you fix just one of
>> these things, that means together we get more of it sorted out,
>> faster. I'd be happy to advise anyone on how to get started.
>>
>> Here's my summary of the current state of things I'm aware of that
>> need to be fixed.
>>
>> Redraw issues:
>> * File chooser's file list
>> - GTK+ bug: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=550939
>> * Tree view's selection and expander arrow
>> - GTK+ bug
>> * MD text editor's text
>> - This may be fixable in MD itself, or might be a GTK+ bug
>>
>> Key binding issues
>> * Good default Mac keybinding scheme
>> * Ability to bind Command
>> - It seems to show up as Alt right now
>> * Reliable capture of keys for keybindings
>> - Can't capture F keys - OS is grabbing them?
>> - Widget mnemonics seem to override key capture - GTK+ issue?
>> * Display keybindings using Mac-style symbols
>> - In key binding manager and menus
>> * Key bindings for GTK+ built-in widgets
>> - GTK+ bug & patch:
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=530351
>> * Review all places that MD code uses key modifiers, e.g. completion
>> window, expanding text selection, etc. and make sure they can be
> made
>> Mac-like
>>
>> Global menu integration
>> * IGE menu integration library is very limited, so currently
> disabled
>> - Can't display menu items with embedded labels, which we use for
>> displaying our accelerators, since we don't use GTK accelerator
>> infrastructure
>> - Doesn't display radio or check items
>> - Doesn't display icons
>> - Doesn't update sensitivity
>> - Reported to be very broken with menus that are dynamically
> updated
>> * Proposed solution: Write a CarbonMenu# binding (P/Invoke, should
> be
>> pretty easy) and use it to turn a CommandEntrySet into a Carbon menu
>> directly
>>
>> Misc
>> * Right-click emulation with Control-click
>> - GTK+ bug & patch:
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=346609
>> * Modal dialogs don't stay on top
>> * Text position shifts while it's selected, even with Monospaced
>> fonts.
>> - Mostly a MD kerning bug, but monospace issues may be
>> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=569146
>> * Dock integration
>> - Some basics done, but would be useful to be able to add commands
>
>> to the menu
>> * File handlers integration
>> - Ffetch list of handlers for given mime types, for "open with"
>> context menu
>> * Recent files list integration
>> - Currently use the FreeDesktop ~/.recently-used file, which still
>> works for MD
>>
>> Drag-n-drop
>> * Buggy, with a lot of unimplemented features needed by the GTK#
>> designer
>> * http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=559904
>> * http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=501588
>> * Shift-drag: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=569145
>>
>> Misc. disabled addins
>> * Gettext addin - not sure why
>> * SVN addin - needs testing, svn binding reportedly very unstable on
>
>> Mac
>> * GtkCore designer - missing drag-n-drop in GTK+, no dllmaps,
>> probably more
>> * Database addin - should work now it no longer uses GtkSourceView,
>
>> but untested
>> * Boo binding - boo console uses GtkSourceView. Port or disable this
>
>> feature.
>> * Moonlight/Silverlight - developer libraries not present (also a
>> problem on Linux)
>> * Python, Vala, Java - totally untested
>>
>> Open GTK+ Quartz bugs can be seen here:
>>
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?query=component:quartz+product:g
> tk%2B+
>>
>> It would be useful to isolate the GTK/GDK issues and file bugs
> against
>> GTK. We can fairly easily apply patches to the GTK+ that Mono ships,
>> making things better for all GTK# apps.
>>
>> -- 
>> Michael Hutchinson
>> http://mjhutchinson.com
>> _______________________________________________
>> Monodevelop-list mailing list
>> Monodevelop-list at lists.ximian.com
>> http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/monodevelop-list
>
>
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