I installed MonoDevelop on Linux and wrote a shell GTK+ application. When I compile and run the application shows up correctly in Linux. When I move the .exe over to Windows, I get a crash "Windows Not Responding", so there is no stack trace. Then I figured I had to install Mono For Windows, so I did that, but no luck - I still crash.
More generally, I am having a hard time picturing what is going on here. Please disabuse me of whatever I get wrong:
People who started the Mono project wrote their own compiler (likely from scratch) to compile C# code. They modeled this after looking at the .NET Framework
They also wrote a CLR for their mono implementation of the byte code. Any architecture that wants to run this code will need the Mono Runtime, as only the Mono Runtime can run the code.
Do I have it right? Why doesn't my program run? Thanks in advance.
Three things stand out to me:
GTK+. GTK isn't part of windows or mono on windows by default. You must install it separately.
Shell Application. That means something special in the windows world (an app that runs as part of (extends) the windows desktop shell, rather than as it's own program), and I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that these don't work cross platform very well or even at all. I'd assume you mean "Console Application" instead, but then why the need for GTK+?
Mono. Make sure you invoke the program using mono. Just because mono is installed doesn't mean that's how your program will run vs Microsoft's own .Net implementation.
Hey, I'm only vaguely familiar with Mono myself but I -think- there is an analyzer tool that will show possible portability issues. If you run through that does it show any issues?
Few things you also check.
Is mono installer contains GTK# libraries.
If yes, check that is the assemblies are in GAC. The assemebiles names be gtk-sharp.dll, gdk-sharp.dll
If no, copy the referenced assemblies in your bin directory. you can see that in your mono develop project.
I assume you mean you wrote a GTK# application. In that case, to run it on Windows, you need to make sure you install "GTK# for .NET" from the Mono Downloads page
On Windows, you can capture a crash dump and see what causes the crash. For example, use WinDbg to execute this application.
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx
Related
So it's basically as stated in the title. I've created a WPF app in Visual Studio 2013 using some external libraries.
Application works flawlessly on my Development machine (Windows 8.1 x64 + Visual Studio 2013) but doesn't run at all on Production device (Tablet with Windows 8 (NOT 8.1)). App is developed under .NET 4.5, doesn't matter if I try to run Debug or Release version. The proccess just hangs a while and then closes without any errors or messages.
If anyone would know what to do or how to fix this I would be very happy.
Thanks in advance :).
The first thing too look up in this situation, would be the Windows event log. When a .NET application crashes badly, the .NET Runtime will log an event there.
Most of the time, these events will log the stack trace which lead to the crash. This will give you a hint as to what happened.
Such logs are found in the "Application" category, and the source name you need to look for is ".NET Runtime". Usually, there will be another entry with the source name "Application Error", but this one is much less likely to help you.
Another useful technique, is to add a Console.WriteLine call at the start of your program, in order to see if that line gets to run at all.
Depending on what you find using these techniques, you may also want to use tools such as Dependency Walker or ILSpy, as suggested by Mike Dinescu.
Most likely a binding error occurs at start-up but the production machine you're testing on is configured to silently report these errors and it doesn't display the typical dialog box that would inform you that the process crashed.
Don't fret though, that message would probably not help you too much anyway.
What you need to do is inspect the main executable with a tool that can generate a dependency tree and figure out which DLLs are missing. Most likely these will be native binaries, not managed. The usual suspects are the VC runtime, or MFC or ATL libraries but there could be others too. That's why you need to use a tool such as DependencyWalker or RedGate's Reflector to find all dependencies for the main executable.
It is because your external libraries are not compiled into final .exe file. So you either need to include them in the same folder or merge them into exe but this process can be quite tricky. Look for ILMerge. However it is way easier to just copy them with your exe file.
I'm a complete beginner to mono & c#. I have source code for this public domain windows app that looks like is written in c#. Is it true I can use mono to compile it for mac? Or does mono allow me to run the windows .exe directly on mac? It's been decades since I compiled anything so if someone can point me to where I should start that would be great. Thanks a lot.
Is it true I can use mono to compile it for mac?
Yes.
Or does mono allow me to run the windows .exe directly on mac?
If that .exe is managed (compiled with .NET) and doesn't have unmanaged dependencies, yes too.
It's been decades since I compiled anything so if someone can point me to where I should start that would be great.
Download Xamarin Studio, start coding.
I am unable to get a GTK# app to run on windows, and I would appreciate any help I can get. I tried googleing around, but was unable to find a solution for my problem.
I wrote a small app in monodevelop using GTK#, which just opens a window with a button.
It runs fine on linux.
However I am unable to get it to run on windows.
I tried installing the GTK+ and the GTK# redistributables, the GTK# SDK, but it still does not work. And it does not show any exceptions thrown (in the command line), which would be helpful for debugging the problem.
After invoking the .exe, it sits there for a few seconds, and after that the shell reappears waiting for the next command, no output whatsoever.
Can anyone please walk me through what do I have to install on a virgin windows install to be able to run GTK# applications?
[edit] I understand mono is not needed to run them, and would like to avoid it, if possible.
Mono.Posix is a required part of the GTK# system - it contains the gettext library interface used to handle internationalized text. By writing in MonoDevelop, there is an option to allow internationalized text when creating the GUI interfaces, which will automatically call this library as part of the generated Build function (it seems to be called when setting user-displayed text, like the title of your form). This means you only need the Mono.Posix.dll library (which will work on Microsoft .NET), not the full Mono runtime.
The exception may be getting written to stderr instead of stdout, which the Windows command line does not show by default. Try:
myapp.exe 2> my.log
and see if that writes the error to a logfile called my.log.
Much like you I had an issue running on Windows 10. The issue in my case was resolved after another Google Result to a blog which mentions that the Mono.Posix references are indeed the cause. However, the blog indicated that you must also delete/convert global::Mono.Unix.Catalog.GetString (if you are using MonoDevelop's Stetic GUI creator). Those will be usually on your Labels.
ie:
dev#laptop:/tmp/myproject$ rg "global::Mono.Unix."
96: this.label2.LabelProp = global::Mono.Unix.Catalog.GetString("25 ROUNDS OF DEAF");
changes to
96: this.label2.LabelProp = "25 ROUNDS OF DEAF"
Since Stetic GUI creator usually puts Partial class files in the subfolder gtk-gui of the project directory. That's probably the best place to check for strays. Although ripgrep (the rg command used up there does recursive fast directory searching of all child folders so might as well use that)
After this you must install the GTKSharp Runtime for .NET (as of today it's file gtk-sharp-2.12.45.msi from mono-project.com for GTK+ also known as GTK2. GTK3 is different and it may be different for future Googler's)
After that recompile the application in MonoDevelop and you can run it on Windows
Source of steps: https://www.martyndavis.com/?p=432
Actually application can run without Mono (console apps, for example) on Windows, but if you have reference to Mono.Posix in code, it can use some platform-specific functions that couldn't be executed on Windows.
On Windows in MonoDevelop you can choose between frameworks (Mono or MS.Net). Try to recompile app on Win with MS.Net framework selected.
I'm about to start a project that requires me to write c# code. The thing is, I've got a mac.
I was wondering if there are any pitfalls involved in c# development using mono on OSX 10.6
I think the page is clear that the implementation is crisp, but on the other hand I've read that people install VMWare or something like it to use Windows. I'd like to avoid that if possible.
Note
I'll be working on a team and all the
other guys have Windows machines
Thanks
Based on your comment to HiVoltRock's answer (ASP.NET development), I'd say Mono 2.10.1 and MonoDevelop will be just fine (the stable release of MonoDevelop works just fine, but for development on OS X I prefer to use the most recent version which I compile from Git).
There are some things to take into account, such as file paths (ie: if the windows devs are writing static paths such as ApplicationsInstallDirectory + "\data\templates\foo.bar"; you will run into problems as directory separators on Mac OS are forward slashes. Also if existing code is using P/Invoke or other specific Window's functionality you'll be in trouble.
Finally if your code base uses third party libraries that requires Windows this could cause you issues.
For reference our product has been designed since day one with a requirement that it runs on Mono on Linux or OS X. With that in mind we've made sure to consider everything with cross-platform execution in mind. If you're joining an existing product, the same considerations might not have been given, meaning a lot of the existing code isn't compatible with Mono.
The Mono Migration Analyser will help determine if you've got any incompatible code.
There is a bit of fud out there about developing under Mono. Our project is an MVC3 with Razor, running .NET 4 using NHibernate, StructureMap etc and there haven't been that many issues developing on a non-Windows machine.
Be aware that the .NET libraries from Microsoft and the implementations in Mono are compatible "most of the time." If you're working in a team, you may run into some headache related to these compatibility issues (also, if you're using any third party plugins to any .NET application you're writing, you may have issues as well.). If you didn't want to run a virtual machine, I'd just bootcamp into Windows. It might disrupt your flow if you're very used to the OSX UI, but if the rest of your team is using Windows, I'd do that just to avoid compatibility issues.
The biggest thing I've had developing on Mono (admittedly on Linux) was GUIs. The majority of GUI-less code will run just fine. The only thing I've had to do is catch a few different exceptions. GUIs, however, would be a whole different beast, so don't expect those to translate well at all.
I would highly recommend using windows thru vmware rather than trying to code with some unstable osx programs. It's not cool to code for hours on a mac and then realize that none of your code works on any windows machine or that the gui looks totally different than on your computer.Always choose the right tools and languages for the right problem. Besides, visual studio is pretty nice to work with most of the time.
I've come across odd cases of memory leaks and segfaults with code compiled on Windows and dropped onto a Mono Linbox as-is. I've also had issues compiling .csproj files with xbuild that had some MS quirk that xbuild wasn't familiar with.
If I'm not mistaken, the two compilers do slightly different things at times, which are related to subtle implementation differences in the runtimes. This is most likely the cause of the segfaults and memory leaks I've come across.
My bottom line is, compile on the same platform as the runtime. So for local testing, you should be fine (you compile on mono on your mac and run/test with mono on your mac). But don't build the project on your mac and then release the resulting Mono binaries to Windows servers running MS .NET runtime (or vice versa). If you have a build server best would be to stick to that (which we all should do anyway... right?).
If your team doesn't have a build process and you must build the binaries you are going to release, I would use a Windows VM for that final step.
How do I start using Mono in Linux as a beginner when I want to switch from Visual Studio?
Is there some easy way to install it like Visual Studio and get started?
So far,with what I've seen,it looks complex to even get started.
Installing and configuring Mono in linux is a lot of work right?
or Is there some distro which I can directly install and get started with applications in Linux?
I recently started to dabble in Mono myself and have so far realized that the MonoProject has made huge advancements in this area. It's well worth it to investigate.
With that said, the easiest method is to get setup with a Linux distro that is Mono friendly such as Suse, or Ubuntu. Personally, I tried it using Ubuntu 8.10.
Once you've got your Linux distro setup properly download and install MonoDevelop. This is an open source IDE that's tightly integrated to work with the Mono platform. MonoDevelop was taken as a branch of SharpDevelop and designed to work with the Mono compiler from the ground up.
This is by far the easiest and fastest way to get setup with Mono. The MonoDevelop IDE is very similar to that of Visual C# Express even. It comes complete with Project/Solution management, GUI development using the GTK# framework, an integrated debugger and a host of other features you would expect in an IDE such as code-completion, line numbers, code-folding etc.
The folks at the MonoProject are on to something with this suite of tools.
Hope this helps you get started.
Mono Project Homepage
Mono Develop Homepage
There are a few interesting books on Mono, although they're probably a little bit old. Still, probably it's worth to grab one and take a look in order to start up.
Practical Mono
Mono: A developer's notebook
Cross-Platform .NET development
Mono Kick-start
Then, I'd install latest Mono (2.4) on a Linux box (OpenSuse is the one they use, so it will always go smoothly for development, but we also use Ubuntu internally) and start playing around with the compiler, MonoDevelop (which is quite good since 2.0) and so on.
The only tough point will be writing GUI applications, although my team make extensively use of MWF on different Unix flavors. But everything else will go as you'd expect. I'm specially happy with how great remoting works, for instance.
If you're used to Linux then it will be much easier, otherwise I'd also recommend you getting used to it following some tutorial.
Remember tools such us NUnit and NAnt will be also available, so you can start writing your code on both Windows and Linux and testing and compiling on both platforms.
With the just released Ubuntu 9.04 a very current Mono development environment is as close as:
apt-get install monodevelop
I used to agree with you that it was somewhat difficult to get going with Mono, but the latest version of Ubuntu has melted that barrier away. And the latest version of Monodevelop is an absolute joy to use.
Don't use Ubuntu? Then I would go with Peter's advice of using a VMWare image.
For a very easy start with mono under linux u can download
a vmware image
a linux live distro
with everything included to start.
If you are accustomed to using visual-studio, you can still develop in Visual Studio, and copy your binaries to Linux/OSX or whatever. Or even better, if you have a shared drive, just reconfigure your VS-Project output directory to the shared location.
There might be advantages to using the mono compiler, or monodevelop, but since you are getting started, the above is really the easiest thing to do. If you want to run on Linux, the mono installer is an excellent option for getting up and running in a hurry. Unfortunately, there's no installer available for the newest mono release, so you'll either need admin permission, or need to compile from source.
http://ftp.novell.com/pub/mono/archive/1.9.1/linux-installer/2/mono-1.9.1_2-installer.bin
For installing newest Mono 3.2.5+ with MonoDevelop 4.2.1+ it is better is use tpokorra repository.
The simplest way I could find is to download the OpenSUSE VMWare Image on their site and just run it. You get all the tools you need :) Preconfigured.
Debian and Ubuntu, and probably all other children, have mono in the repository. So, setting up mono in Linux can be as easy as
aptitude install monodevelop
However I would suggest version 2 which requires using the 'sid' repository in Debian (don't know about Ubuntu).
vim /etc/apt/sources.list [ :%s/squeeze/sid/g ]