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Mono 3.2

mono-project.com

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Re: Mono 3.2

#21

Post by Helianthus »

bad_user wrote: post #16
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how much the Linux community showed the middle finger to the Mono guys I'm surprised there is any support left.

That's a wild generalization which I don't think it's true. The "Linux community" you speak of is a loud minority of mentally deranged folks. Mono never succeeded on Linux because it always felt like a second-class citizen on the desktop and it's basically useless for server-side apps, an area where the Linux ecosystem shines. Python is popular on Linux because Python can be used for everything, including desktop app…

>That's a wild generalization which I don't think it's true. The "Linux community" you speak of is a loud minority of mentally deranged folks.

Nicely done.

Re: Mono 3.2

#22

Post by MichaelGG »

bad_user wrote: post #16
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how much the Linux community showed the middle finger to the Mono guys I'm surprised there is any support left.

That's a wild generalization which I don't think it's true. The "Linux community" you speak of is a loud minority of mentally deranged folks. Mono never succeeded on Linux because it always felt like a second-class citizen on the desktop and it's basically useless for server-side apps, an area where the Linux ecosystem shines. Python is popular on Linux because Python can be used for everything, including desktop app…

Why is Mono "basically useless for server-side apps"? I've been running production apps, server-side, with Mono (first time was almost 10 years ago - near end of a payment processing project when some partner decided they needed a piece to run on a Linux box; just copied the exe over and done).

Java and .NET both have a wide variety of libraries and bindings. I'd say that for many projects, the CLR will likely have the bindings you need.

I believe there was probably a ton of in-fighting at Microsoft regarding .NET's cross-platformness. Microsoft did release an open source version of .NET (Rotor) that ran on Mac OS and FreeBSD. The CLR and BCL in general is not Windows-specific. For the most part, the runtime and core libraries are careful to realise they may operate in other environments. However, I'd imagine the argument of "why make software easier to run on non-Windows, which is a major source of revenue" won out. (After all, Sun put money into Java, which didn't seem to help their revenues, right? And then, when MS decided to adopt Java, Sun cut 'em off. Otherwise, .NET might never have had happened, at least not to the same extent, as MS would have sunk a lot of effort into J++.)

The parts of .NET that are platform-specific are for good reason. Cross-platform UIs, for instance (like Java's), seem to universally suck.

Meanwhile, the Mono guys are close enough to make cross-platform viable for many people. They provide a legitimate "it's not vendor lock-in" excuse. And Microsoft could always buy them if they wanted to get more involved.

Re: Mono 3.2

#23

Post by MichaelGG »

animesh wrote: post #20
yapcguy wrote: post #2

I like C# and I'm impressed with Mono but there is just something not right. It might be irrational but knowing that Microsoft's DNA is everywhere makes me feel uncomfortable. I'm also not happy that Linux is a second class citizen - there is no Xamarin Studio for Linux, the latest version of MonoDevelop is not packaged for Linux, and the latest version of Mono 3.2 is only packaged for Mac as an easy download. The id…

I wish someone would package this version of Mono for Debian Testing (or at least Sid). I am starting to love building things from source, but having no official documentation on how to build Mono/MonoDevelop from source the correct way really is tiring. (Installing pango/gtk etc from source really takes the juice out of you.)

http://www.mono-project.com/Compiling_Mono

First result on Google for building Mono. Download the source, unpack, configure, make install. I've done this on many versions, and it seems to work just fine.

Re: Mono 3.2

#24

Post by boothead »

MichaelGG wrote: post #23
animesh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish someone would package this version of Mono for Debian Testing (or at least Sid). I am starting to love building things from source, but having no official documentation on how to build Mono/MonoDevelop from source the correct way really is tiring. (Installing pango/gtk etc from source really takes the juice out of you.)

http://www.mono-project.com/Compiling_Mono First result on Google for building Mono. Download the source, unpack, configure, make install. I've done this on many versions, and it seems to work just fine.

Not my experience... I've been battling for several days now to try and get mono, monodevelop and F# installed from git (admittedly I'm trying to do that using a prefix argument to the various configure steps). My overwhelming impression is that linux simply isnt in mono's critical path anymore.

Re: Mono 3.2

#25

Post by i386 »

bad_user wrote: post #16
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how much the Linux community showed the middle finger to the Mono guys I'm surprised there is any support left.

That's a wild generalization which I don't think it's true. The "Linux community" you speak of is a loud minority of mentally deranged folks. Mono never succeeded on Linux because it always felt like a second-class citizen on the desktop and it's basically useless for server-side apps, an area where the Linux ecosystem shines. Python is popular on Linux because Python can be used for everything, including desktop app…

> Mono never succeeded on Linux because it always felt like a second-class citizen on the desktop

Err, I'm not sure where you were from 2005 to 2009...

There were apps like Tomboy that were included in GNOME releases that were 100% written in C# and run by Mono. GTK# was one of the most complete bindings ever written for GNOME/GTK.

If you've ever written a GObject or GTK based app you would know its not easy to do in C. With GTK#, you could build something very quick with a modern virtual machine, framework bindings for pretty much the entire free desktop stack (they automatically generated them and kept them up to date with every release), high level language and IDE with great syntax highlighting and autocomplete.

What did happen was a massive irrational backlash against C# by neckbeards that ended with it being kicked out of GNOME core and off the debian and ubuntu install CD's, all because they saw Microsoft name against the standard, didn't agree with the patents (a fact of life when you build software) and bricked themselves.

Re: Mono 3.2

#26

Post by bad_user »

MichaelGG wrote: post #22
bad_user wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a wild generalization which I don't think it's true. The "Linux community" you speak of is a loud minority of mentally deranged folks. Mono never succeeded on Linux because it always felt like a second-class citizen on the desktop and it's basically useless for server-side apps, an area where the Linux ecosystem shines. Python is popular on Linux because Python can be used for everything, including desktop app…

Why is Mono "basically useless for server-side apps"? I've been running production apps, server-side, with Mono (first time was almost 10 years ago - near end of a payment processing project when some partner decided they needed a piece to run on a Linux box; just copied the exe over and done). Java and .NET both have a wide variety of libraries and bindings. I'd say that for many projects, the CLR will likely have t…

> Why is Mono "basically useless for server-side apps"? I've been running production apps, server-side, with Mono ...

The whole ecosystem is Windows only and tightly coupled with Visual Studio. You do not have Maven for example and personally I could never get NuGet to run. Also, before the new generational garbage collector, which was just declared stable, ASP.NET was leaking memory because the old conservative garbage collector had problems with the allocation patterns of ASP.NET. Yes, you could run your fancy app on Linux, but for anything serious you had to restart your servers periodically.

Performance sucks too for ASP.NET apps. It's not acceptable for a compiled and statically typed language to have the same performance as Python, or sometimes even worse. Part of the reason for that is the heaviness of ASP.NET and the IIS coupling that is missing in Mono. But then again, why should that be your problem, when better alternatives for Unix are available?

Also, ever tried debugging / profiling an app in production? Seriously, you have to be slightly masochistic to use Mono on server-side.

Fun fact: .NET's debugging symbols are not a part of ECMA's standards, are not documented and for a long time Mono used its own incompatible format for debugging symbols.

> Microsoft did release an open source version of .NET (Rotor) that ran on Mac OS and FreeBSD

Rotor was never open-source. "Shared source" is not open-source. In fact people that contributed to Mono were warned to not look at Rotor's source-code.

> After all, Sun put money into Java, which didn't seem to help their revenues, right?

Blaming Java somehow for Sun's failure is a logical fallacy. There is no proof that .NET helped Microsoft's bottom line (my gut tells me that it did the opposite). Also, I'm pretty sure Java was a major reason for why Oracle bought Sun and for why Google was also thinking of buying Sun.

> when MS decided to adopt Java, Sun cut 'em off

Microsoft had an explicit agreement with Sun. They broke it by making Visual J++ both source and binary incompatible with Java. This isn't regular "adoption", but rather their usual embrace/extend strategy. Also .NET 1.0 was J++.

> The parts of .NET that are platform-specific are for good reason. Cross-platform UIs, for instance (like Java's), seem to universally suck

That's a poor example. When thinking of cross-platform, I think more about Qt than I think about Swing. Also, platform-specific behaviour has leaked much further than Windows Forms. For example, Mono's implementation of asynchronous sockets suffered for years because System.Net.Sockets was modelled after Windows' kernel and doesn't map cleanly with poll/epoll/kqueue.

Re: Mono 3.2

#27

Post by coldtea »

yapcguy wrote: post #2

I like C# and I'm impressed with Mono but there is just something not right. It might be irrational but knowing that Microsoft's DNA is everywhere makes me feel uncomfortable. I'm also not happy that Linux is a second class citizen - there is no Xamarin Studio for Linux, the latest version of MonoDevelop is not packaged for Linux, and the latest version of Mono 3.2 is only packaged for Mac as an easy download. The id…

>I like C# and I'm impressed with Mono but there is just something not right. It might be irrational but knowing that Microsoft's DNA is everywhere makes me feel uncomfortable. (...) I'm also not happy that Linux is a second class citizen

The first kind of thinking is what got us into the second kind of situation.

Enjoy ...Vala.

Re: Mono 3.2

#28

Post by bad_user »

i386 wrote: post #25
bad_user wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a wild generalization which I don't think it's true. The "Linux community" you speak of is a loud minority of mentally deranged folks. Mono never succeeded on Linux because it always felt like a second-class citizen on the desktop and it's basically useless for server-side apps, an area where the Linux ecosystem shines. Python is popular on Linux because Python can be used for everything, including desktop app…

> Mono never succeeded on Linux because it always felt like a second-class citizen on the desktop Err, I'm not sure where you were from 2005 to 2009... There were apps like Tomboy that were included in GNOME releases that were 100% written in C# and run by Mono. GTK# was one of the most complete bindings ever written for GNOME/GTK. If you've ever written a GObject or GTK based app you would know its not easy to do in…

On desktop Linux, Mono's direct competition is not C++, but rather Python.

Also, Mono apps were replaced in Ubuntu/Debian because of Mono's large footprint, both in memory and in disk usage (until recently, Ubuntu has been constrained for a long time to the size of one CD). Also development died and these distros are distributing by default apps that are actively developed and maintained.

Re: Mono 3.2

#29

Post by coldtea »

bad_user wrote: post #16
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how much the Linux community showed the middle finger to the Mono guys I'm surprised there is any support left.

That's a wild generalization which I don't think it's true. The "Linux community" you speak of is a loud minority of mentally deranged folks. Mono never succeeded on Linux because it always felt like a second-class citizen on the desktop and it's basically useless for server-side apps, an area where the Linux ecosystem shines. Python is popular on Linux because Python can be used for everything, including desktop app…

>That's a wild generalization which I don't think it's true. The "Linux community" you speak of is a loud minority of mentally deranged folks.

Ironic, because then you go to state:

>Mono never succeeded on Linux because it always felt like a second-class citizen on the desktop

Mono had full GTK support. Tons of popular Gnome apps were written in Mono, music apps, photo viewers, desktop search etc. There was nothing "second-class citizen" about it.

It was all about the MS situation and FUD.

>and it's basically useless for server-side apps, an area where the Linux ecosystem shines.

For one, it's based on .NET, has a port of the MVC web framework and everything -- and tons of open source stuff for it. "Basically useless"? The same tech powers 99% of server-side apps on Windows.

Re: Mono 3.2

#30

Post by coldtea »

bad_user wrote: post #26
MichaelGG wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is Mono "basically useless for server-side apps"? I've been running production apps, server-side, with Mono (first time was almost 10 years ago - near end of a payment processing project when some partner decided they needed a piece to run on a Linux box; just copied the exe over and done). Java and .NET both have a wide variety of libraries and bindings. I'd say that for many projects, the CLR will likely have t…

> Why is Mono "basically useless for server-side apps"? I've been running production apps, server-side, with Mono ... The whole ecosystem is Windows only and tightly coupled with Visual Studio. You do not have Maven for example and personally I could never get NuGet to run. Also, before the new generational garbage collector, which was just declared stable, ASP.NET was leaking memory because the old conservative garb…

>The whole ecosystem is Windows only and tightly coupled with Visual Studio.

Wrong.

>You do not have Maven for example and personally I could never get NuGet to run.

Besides the fact that there are alternatives (and that you don't even need it in the first place), personal competence ---not getting it to run-- is not a valid reason to discard it.

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