[Mono-winforms-list] WinForms On Linux

[Rolf Bjarne Kvinge]

> Hi Dan,
> 
> To introduce myself quickly, I am lead of a small development team of
> engineering software. The application is client/server written in
> VB.Net and MSSQL. I am looking at the feasibility of supporting linux and
thought
> I would take a look at how useable Mono is. I am a relative linux newb. I
> am not really fussed about missing VB specific features in Mono because
> they can be recoded easily however I have a heavy reliance on WinForms and
> GDI+.
> 
> I have recently installed Feisty Ubuntu and installed Mono/MonoDevelop
> from the package manager on my home machine to have a play and havent got
> very far.
> 
> Windows.Forms is part of a standard Mono installation. I cant see how
> to reference and/or use it.
> 
> I have been occasionally checking http://www.mono-project.com/ over
> quite a long time.
> http://www.mono-project.com/WinForms provides some background info,
> nothing of any use really. The development weblog it references was last
> updated Feb 06. I am happy using the latest stable release so I hope I
dont have to
> compile my own version.
> 
> Is there a simple way of getting up and running with WinForms? Is there
> a decent way to develop WinForms in Linux or would I be better off
> staying in Windows and using Visual Studio (and then trying to compile
under Mono
> and run results on Linux)? If there are any other website with information
> please point me in the right direction, I have tried the mono website,
> mailing list, various blogs, Wikipedia and whatever Google has thrown
> up to try and find my way.

MonoDevelop does not support visually designing Winforms application yet, so
you might be better off for the moment using VS' design time support for
Winforms. 

You can however load the VS2005 solution directly in MonoDevelop and work
with the code it as-is, there's no need to convert anything. Just hit run
and you should also see if your application compiles on linux or not. You
can also try copying the binaries over directly, normally there's no need to
recompile anything actually.

In MonoDevelop's solution explorer there's also a list of references for
every project, where you can add a reference to Winforms (as well as other
assemblies), in case you don't want to use the VS solution (which should
already have the reference added). 

You can also use MoMA (http://www.mono-project.com/MoMA) to quickly get a
rough estimate about how much work it would be to support Mono.

Rolf