Mono 2.2 has been released.  Mono is a really great open source version of .NET and it is finding its way into many platforms that need to support multiplatform code such as Unity3D. 

This update brings in some great stuff like routing controllers to use the ASP.NET MVC architecture, csharp inteactive shell and other great performance enhancements to an already speedy C#.

Mono 2.0 the open source .NET framework has been released.  Mono has made it’s way into many great systems by now from websites to even 3d engines such as Unity3D. It is great to have a toolkit that is powerful, has a great language set from C# to Boo and that is available on multiple platforms.  From Windows, to *nix to of course Mac OSX built on unix, it all just works.

Having 2.0 solid and complete is a great step to making production apps run off of it.

Microsoft Compatible APIs

• ADO.NET 2.0 API for accessing databases.

• ASP.NET 2.0 API for developing Web-based applications.

• Windows.Forms 2.0 API to create desktop applications.

• System.XML 2.0: An API to manipulate XML documents.

• System.Core: Provides support for the Language Integrated Query (LINQ).

• System.Xml.Linq: Provides a LINQ provider for XML.

• System.Drawing 2.0 API: A portable graphics rendering API.

Mono APIs

• Gtk# 2.12: A binding to the Gtk+ 2.12 and GNOME libraries for creating desktop applications on Linux, Windows and MacOS X.
• Mono.Cecil: A library to manipulate ECMA CLI files (the native format used for executables and libraries).
• Mono.Cairo: A binding to the Cairo Graphics library to produce 2D graphics and render them into a variety of forms (images, windows, postscript and PDF).
• Mono’s SQLite support: a library to create and consume databases created with SQLite.
• Mono.Posix: a library to access Linux and Unix specific functionality from your managed application. With both a low-level interface as well as higher level interfaces.

Third Party APIs bundled with Mono

• Extensive support for databases: PostgresSQL, DB2, Oracle, Sybase, SQL server, SQLite and Firebird.
• C5 Generics Library: we are bundling the C5 generics collection class library as part of Mono.

Compilers

These compilers are part of the Mono 2.0 release:

• C# 3.0 compiler implementation, with full support for LINQ.
• Visual Basic 8 compiler.
• IL assembler and disassembler and the development toolchain required to create libraries and applications.

Great news!  Mono has made it to .NET 3.0 support and this includes some of the latest stuff like LINQ expressions.

I am pleased to announce that Mono C# compiler (gmcs) has now full C# 3.0 support. Most of the features has been available since Mono 1.2.6 release. However, with the upcoming Mono 2.0 release we will also support complex LINQ expressions and mainly expression trees which is fairly overlooked new feature with a lot of potential.

For anyone interested in compiling and running this LukeH’s slightly extreme LINQ example I have good news. It compiles on Mono and it runs as fast as on .NET.

Well Mono has finally reached 2.0. This is great news!  .NET skills now can span *nix, OSX, and Windows platforms.  But is your app or assembly capable of running on Mono?  Find out with MoMa.

Of course this is just a heuristic check and only finds out if your application on the surface has issues with running on a mono platform such as calls to p/invoke to windows apis or unsafe code that uses native calls but it is a great place to start.

The Mono Migration Analyzer (MoMA) tool helps you identify issues you may have when porting your .Net application to Mono. It helps pinpoint platform specific calls (P/Invoke) and areas that are not yet supported by the Mono project.

While MoMA can help show potential issues, there are many complex factors that cannot be covered by a simple tool. MoMA may fail to point out areas that will cause problems, and may point out areas which will not actually be an issue.

Use the results provided as a guide to get you started on porting your application, but remember the true test is actually running your application on Mono.

For a description of the errors that MoMA detects and how to deal with them, see MoMA – Issue Descriptions.

I have recently been really interested in making platforms and applications that aren’t limited by the OS they are contained in.  Thus mono is a very interesting platform now that it supports 2.0 fully and all the generic goodness to limit boxing/unboxing, common code between .net 2.0 apps (which are pretty much mainstream now) and developing for more of a standard that ensures your apps are portable.

Granted .NET 3.0 and 3.5 (pretty much the same version really with the addition of new frameworks such as WCF, LINQ which is very cool and functional as well as Silverlight) but most places deployed code is still .NET 2.0 and the poor souls working on very constricting .NET 1.0 and 1.1.

Also, recently Moonlight the Mono version of Silverlight has been released for alpha.

Mono is a great open source .NET implementation that has been looking to being a baseplane dream to .net development. They even have Moonlight which will eventually be caught up with Silverlight development.

However today mono gets a killer IDE in the MonoDevelop name.

[insertname]Develop projects are largely based on the SharpDevelop IDE that is one of my favorites with .net and is open source. If you are looking for a FAST IDE SharpDevelop is that. In the FAQ Miguel mentions that MonoDevelop is a port or branch of SharpDevelop which is great news for quality, speed and usability.

FlashDevelop is also another great kit based on this IDE framework. I am very pleased Mono is using the same standard for IDEs that mimic VS.NET only much more speedy and usable in SharpDevelop and FlashDevelop (both .net apps themselves and two of the only good winforms apps there ever were).

I highly recommend mono and MonoDevelop. These are tools that are baseplane languages and platforms that have all the benefits of .net development but for any platform and now for any platform as an IDE. One problem with FlashDevelop is that it is only for Windows machines but maybe MonoDevelop will influence and will allow it for other platforms as well and everyone will be able to use the best IDE there is for flash and flex development.

In the meantime if you are a .net developer and want to develop for multiple platforms not just Windows then Mono is your tool and MonoDevelop is your IDE.

The main features of MonoDevelop are:

• Customizable workbench, including custom key bindings, custom layouts, and external tools.
• Support for several languages, with C#, VB.NET and C/C++ support included, and Boo and Java (IKVM) support available as separate add-ins.
• Support for code completion and type information tooltips.
• Refactoring operations to simplify changes like renaming types and type members, encapsulating fields, overriding methods, or implementing interfaces.
• Code navigation operations such as jumping to variable definitions and finding derived classes.
• Easy to use GUI designer for GTK# applications, also supporting the creation and management of custom GTK# widget libraries.
• Integrated source code version control, with support for Subversion.
• Integrated unit testing based on NUnit.
• Support for ASP.NET projects, allowing web projects can be built and tested on XSP.
• Integrated database explorer and editor (beta).
• Integration with Monodoc, to provide documentation about classes.
• Support for makefiles, both generation and synchronization.
• Support for Microsoft Visual Studio project formats.
• Packaging system that allows generating tarballs, source code and binary packages.
• Command line tools for building and managing projects.
• Support for localization projects.
• Extensible add-in architecture.