[MonoDevelop] Cross platform build strategy

[Jayme]

Note: I posted this to the list as a non-subscriber but the moderator never 
approved it - so apologies in advance if a duplicate arrives in a couple 
days:

Hey guys,
 I have worked on several open source .NET based projects before Mono was 
out (specific to Microsoft's runtime) and lately have been spending more 
free time using Mono on both Windows XP and FC3 to start working on new 
projects and ideas. Monodevelop is so important to the Mono community (we 
need a stable free IDE bad!), and Mono is equally important to getting 
people using linux for .NET development "switched over" from Windows. The 
current way Monodevelop is being distributed is a bummer though, as it 
assumes everyone who wants to contribute code to it is a linux developer or 
has no problem running makefiles on windows and getting dependency builds 
from SVN for all kinds of other stuff Monodevelop relies on. Realistically 
this isn't the case.
 I would like to throw a simple idea out there for a build solution for 
making it easier for people to get SVN builds of Monodevelop on thier box 
and in turn getting to a production capable release quicker. We all know the 
power of open source development is leveraging the community and the reality 
of the current situation is that alot of the people who could really help 
get Monodevelop done that aren't already working on the project are using 
Windows.
 I would recommend switching the build system for Monodevelop to NAnt (
http://nant.sourceforge.net).
 - Create a build script that someone with NAnt installed can download to 
their computer and run on their local windows / linux / OSX box that will 
use the subversion tasks for NAnt to get the code from SVN and any other 
dependencies on wierd versions of GTK# etc. This seems to be happening each 
time you guys release and expecting people who are just making the switch to 
linux to understand all the issues with dependency management when you could 
do this with a NAnt build script seems to not be the most efficient method 
for getting people going with a development build of Monodevelop they can 
use to contribute patches back with.
 -Switch the build scripts for Monodevelop itself over to NAnt. NAnt is in 
version 0.85 RC3 and has alot of really great people working on it. I will 
personally volunteer to help write any new tasks needed to get things that 
are being done by the makefiles today working in NAnt.
 Just an idea,
 Jayme Edwards
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