Mono


 * Check out 10 things to know about Mono and Mono status report  

Mono is a project led by Novell (formerly by Ximian) to create an Ecma standard compliant .NET compatible set of tools, including among others a C# compiler and a Common Language Runtime. Mono can be run on Linux, BSD, UNIX, Mac OS X, Solaris and Windows operating systems.

The Mono runtime contains a just-in-time compilation (JIT) engine for a number of processors: x86, SPARC, PowerPC, ARM, S390 (in 32-bit and 64-bit mode), and x86-64, IA64 and SPARC for 64-bit modes.

Mono includes compilers, an ECMA-compatible runtime engine (the Common Language Runtime, or CLR), and many libraries. The libraries include Microsoft .NET compatibility libraries (including ADO.NET, System.Windows.Forms and ASP.NET), Mono's own and third party class libraries.Gtk#, a set of .NET bindings for the gtk+ toolkit and assorted GNOME libraries can be found in the latter. This library allows you to build fully native Gnome application using Mono and includes support for user interfaces built with the Glade interface builder. Furthermore, Mono's runtime can be embedded into applications for simplified packaging and shipping. In addition, the Mono project offers MonoDevelop, an IDE, Debugging, and a documentation browser.

What is Mono exactly?
The Mono Project is an open development initiative sponsored by Novell to develop an open source, UNIX version of the Microsoft .NET development platform. Its objective is to enable UNIX developers to build and deploy cross-platform .NET Applications. The project implements various technologies developed by Microsoft that have now been submitted to the ECMA for standardization.

What's included in Mono?

 * A Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) virtual machine that contains a class loader, Just-in-time compiler, and a garbage collecting runtime.
 * A class library that can work with any language which works on the CLR. Both .NET compatible class libraries as well as Mono-provided class libraries are included.
 * A compiler for the C# language. In the future we might work on other compilers that target the Common Language Runtime.

History of Mono

 * See also Mono timeline

What is Mono
Mono is an open source development project that allows developers to create cross-platform .NET applications. Mono altogether consists of:
 * a runtime called Mono (analogous to the .NET runtime)
 * a C# compiler called mono csharp or mcs for short (analogous to Microsoft's own C# compiler)
 * libraries (System.IO, System.Threading, etc.) a near complete (95%) implementation of the .NET 2.0 library

Who makes Mono?
Mono is currently funded by Novell corporation and is greatly supported by a large scale community effort.

Novell is collaborating with Microsoft to make a Linux edition of Silverlight, called Moonlight. The collaboration entails specification, regression tests and a media package. Microsoft though plays no current managerial role in Mono or Moonlight.

What parts of .NET are implemented

 * See Mono status report

Roadmap
http://go-mono.com/forums/#nabble-to17522259
 * July 14th mono-2-0 branches
 * July 21st Second Beta for Mono 2.0 (we called 1.9 beta1)
 * July 21th Mono 2.0 RC1 (two weeks later)
 * Aug 4th Mono 2.0 RC2 (two weeks later)
 * Aug 18th Mono 2.0 RC3, optional (two weeks later)
 * Sept 9th Mono 2.0 is released.

What is Mono

 * Introducing Mono
 * Dotnetrocks podcast introduces Mono
 * Mono - some code analysis

Community links

 * Mono mailing list (forum)
 * Mono Forums
 * Mono community

Download Mono

 * Download Mono latest stable version (what you want)
 * Mono .rpm binary repository - very latest
 * Mono vmware image - try Mono without modifying your computer
 * Mono for Solaris 10/x86
 * Mono .deb files for Debian and Ubuntu
 * Mono 1.9 on Ubuntu - a few scripts and suggestions
 * Mono 1.9 backported to Ubuntu 8.04 and 7.10 - untested

Download sources

 * Daily builds - binaries
 * Latest snapshot builds RPMs for OpenSuse and sources - unstable
 * SVN location - latest development code
 * Recent changes to mcs class libraries
 * mono svn patches