[Mono-osx] MacOS bindings and MonoDevelop.

[marc hoffman]

Miguel,

On May 11, 2009, at 8:03 PM, Miguel de Icaza wrote:

> Hello folks,
>
>    We are at an interesting point in the life of Mono on OSX.
>
>    I want to discuss two topics
>
> BINDINGS
>
>    We at Novell are still shipping the old Cocoa# that is no longer
> being actively developed or maintained and in the meantime three
> bindings have been created.
>
>    I took a look at MonObjc this weekend and the docs were great, the
> source code pretty and the community seems active.
>
>    I know there are two other bindings (one from Jesse I believe, and
> one that uses some static bindings that is supposed to be very fast).
>
>    We do not plan on spending any resources (Novell) on Cocoa# at this
> point, but we will continue to ship the library for folks that might
> have taken a dependency on it and expect it to be part of Mono.
>
>    But we would like to encourage/recommend one of the new frameworks
> for Mono, and we would love to see MonoDevelop templates so folks  
> doing
> OSX-only apps can get up and running in no time.
>
>    Is there any reason why we can not merge the "best of" each
> framework into MonObjc which seems to have an active and vibrant
> community?

agreed on Monobjc as the best choice for the base, here.

> MONODEVELOP
>
>    In addition to the templates for the bindings (which each binding
> could provide;   We would just have to make it so that MonoDevelop can
> locate those templates installed by other frameworks).
>
>    But additionally, if we add support for Interface Builder, we  
> should
> probably be thinking how can we map interface builder outlets and map
> those to code-behind or partial classes to give folks automatically
> support for intellisense for any outlets/objects created.

we have some stuff in Oxygene/Delphi Prism (currently VS-bound) that  
we'd be happy to contribute. we've got tools that generate partial  
classes based on outlets and actions defined in NIB files in the  
project, as well as an msbuild task to "macpack" WinForms, Cocoa# and  
Monobjc projects sop you can build an .app right from the IDE. some  
work/thought would be eneded to get this moved over into MD, but  
should be doable and provide a good starting point.

as i'm extremely swamped with stuff the foreseeable future, i don't  
wanna get too involved in actually DOING this myself, but if anyone  
wants to take a look at our stuff and take over the task of migrating/ 
incorporating that, they can contact me and we can get going.

check out these links for descriptions of whats there, currently:

http://prismwiki.codegear.com/en/NIB_File_Code_Generators
http://prismwiki.codegear.com/en/MacPack_%28MSBuild_Task%29
http://prismwiki.codegear.com/en/Creating_Monobjc_Applications_for_the_Mac


fwiw, i'll also be at WWDC, if anyone wants to meet up and (whether  
for this, or just in general ;)


yours,
marc