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Email: mono@novell.com
We have just released Moonlight 0.7 to the public.
Get your copy here.
This new version of Moonlight works on both Firefox 2.0 and 3.0 and sports some significant changes from 0.6:
Web-based forums for Mono discussions have been added at http://www.go-mono.com/forums
Most active Mono community members participate in on-line discussions through our mailing lists; however, many Mono users have expressed a preference for web forums based discussions.
In order to address this demand for an official forums for Mono, while keeping the community engaged in our mailing lists, we have embedded nabble.com into our site to create a bridge between the two groups. So, you can now use whichever method you prefer participate in the community.
To encourage users to try out Moonlight, we are doing a source-code only release of Moonlight for developers to try out Moonlight.
To try out Moonlight, you have two options:
Firefox addins are available from http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight.
Source code for Moonlight is available from here. To compile Moonlight from source code follow these instructions.
We have done a minor release of Mono 1.9, Mono 1.9.1 that contains various bug fixes. Please see the release notes for details.
Mono 1.9.1 is available from our downloads page.
As part of the QA process for Mono, our fabulous QA team has been packaging various popular open source .NET applications, Gnome, Gtk#, ASP.NET, libraries and Windows.Forms in an easy-to-install fashion for various Linux distributions.
We are using the OpenSUSE Build Service to make the software available for various Linux distributions.
Our repository is available here, for instructions on how to add the repository see the user manual.
Starting with version 2.0 of Mono, the Mono C# compiler source code will also be available under the MIT X11 license.
We are changing the license to allow parts of the compiler to be reused as part of MonoDevelop, our LINQ class libraries and to embed it in ASP.NET.
In MonoDevelop: This will allow the compiler to be used to improve code-completion to support C# 3.0 as well as improving the heuristics when offering completions. This will reuse the front end and parts of the backend.
Compiler hosting inside ASP.NET: This will embed the whole compiler into the ASP.NET process, eliminating about one second for each compilation of a piece of code. In the past, for each request for an uncompiled resource, we would have to call the compiler, wait for its output and then load the output. This typically shaves between 0.7 to 1 second on those scenarios, ideal to improve the developer experience.
LINQ Class Libraries: This will allow us to reuse parts of the compiler in our System.Core implementation for LINQ for the current 3.5 generation and upcoming generations. Many corner cases are handled by the compiler, and we will now be able to lift those pieces. This will mostly use the backend of the compiler.
Slightly delayed news, a few weeks ago we released our best Mono release so far: Mono 1.9, the last release before Mono reaches its 2.0 level.
Mono 1.9 is considered a stable release and should be considered the new stable version to be shipped. It should replace older versions of Mono 1.2
You can obtain this from the downloads page.
These tutorials are quite popular to help developers that have a Windows.Forms or ASP.NET application port it to Unix. They walk you through the process of bringing your software to Linux, MacOS X or Solaris:
It is also useful to look at the general porting guidelines.
After a few years in the oven, we are ready to announce the first release of MonoDevelop. Lluis has put together a set of in-depth release notes that covers the major features available in MonoDevelop and links to various tutorials and screencasts as well as extensive screenshots of what is available in MonoDevelop 1.0.
MonoDevelop 1.0 is designed mostly for Linux developers creating Gnome and ASP.NET applications but MonoDevelop is also available for MacOS users that download our Mono installer and will still be useful if they are building Mono-based applications on OSX.
The IDE has many of the features that you would expect from a modern IDE for Mono: support for programming in multiple languages, an extensible design, editors and designers for ASP.NET and Gnome applications, integration with Unix toolchains and Visual Studio Solutions, support for source code control and following standard Unix development practices, integrated NUnit testing, Unix Packaging and Deployment (following the GNU conventions, and Mono conventions) for libraries and packages), internationalization and localization, tools to maintain your project documentation and command line tools to access this functionality.
We have some pretty good language support in this release: C#, VisualBasic.NET, Java, C and C++. Check the previous link for the details as to how extensive the support is for each feature.
Some screencasts:
There is more documentation on MonoDevelop available as well.
Mono Snapshot builds for trunk are now available. They are synchronized about once every hour and they contain the source code for all modules that we typically package from trunk, as well as RPMs for a few systems every few hours.
EntitySpaces has announced a winner for their contest to write an application to run on Linux with Mono.
From their announcement:
If you are an EntitySpaces customer, you can now travel anywhere. From Windows, to Mono/Linux solutions, to the Compact Framework and all kinds of wireless devices, to Web Applications including "Medium Trust" support, or to high-end Enterprise Applications, EntitySpaces can take you there. EntitySpaces is truly a tiny, lightweight, powerful architecture for the Microsoft.NET Framework, and uses zero reflection. If you are a Mono developer, EntitySpaces is a terrific architecture for you. With it, you can work on both sides of the isle. Our database independence can free you from most of the complexities of supporting many types of databases, including those that run under Mono, such as MySQL and VistaDB. No longer will you have to invent new architectures with every new challenge that comes down the road.Our contest winner goes by the title Pro.Coder, and is a independent contractor. We have received his entry to our Mono contest, and were quite pleased. Pro.Coder sent us a DVD with the EntitySpaces demo running under Mono. Thank you Pro.Coder, you did an excellent job. An image of it is shown below. Pro.Coder added the CRUD and DynamicQuery Join examples, to satisfy our contest requirements.
Read their announcement for details on how Pro.Coder got started with Mono. It details what they downloaded (EntitySpaces, Mono, MySQL connector, VMWare Player, Mono VMware image), which versions of the software they used, how they imported the database and how they were able to deliver the application.
Rob Howard today announced that their Graffiti product will run on top of Mono, and the platforms supported by Mono:
Early this week we announced that VistaDB will be the database that Graffiti uses by default. You will be able to use other databases (SQL Server and MySQL) too, but we liked VistaDB for a variety of reasons. One of which we're officially announcing today:Graffiti is going to run on Mono.
There are a variety of reasons why adding Mono support makes sense. But the biggest reason is choice. It gives people more choices for how they want to use Graffiti.
By supporting Mono, in addition to Microsoft .NET, Graffiti will be available on the following platforms:
Windows, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, and Unix
We're not there yet, but we've been working with some folks on the Mono team to make the necessary changes in Graffiti to run on Mono. Everyday we get a little closer, but we're far enough along now that we're ready to start talking about it.
Of course, having someone like Telligent making this announcement has made all of us very happy. We look forward to their product launch.
Here is an intro about what Graffiti is.
We have released the new version of MoMA which corresponds with the 1.2.6 release of Mono. There are two very important changes that are worth mentioning about this new version.
- Addition of .Net 3.0/3.5 Classes - Beginning with 1.2.6, we include the definitions needed to scan your .Net 3.0 and 3.5 apps. At this point, we report everything as missing. Even though we have implemented some of these classes in our Olive project, we do not currently ship this with the released Mono, and MoMA tracks the Mono releases.
So what good is adding the 3.0/3.5 stuffs if we are going to report it all as missing? We will soon be getting to the point where we need to figure out what new stuff to implement next. By scanning your app with MoMA and submitting the missing report, we can see which parts are the most important to our users so we can prioritize. (And yes, we _really_ use this data. MoMA reports have pretty much dictated our prioritization since it was released a year ago.)
- Removal of Design Namespaces - One of our awesome mono-vangelists pointed out that people scan their app (and third party controls) and see all kinds of warnings about things missing in the Design classes. However, these classes are not used to run apps, just for designers such as Visual Studio. So we are potentially scaring off users for no reason. Therefore, beginning with 1.2.6, we no longer include the Design namespaces in MoMA reports. (If you really want the Design stuffs, you can download the definition file that includes them on the MoMA home page.)
- How Do I Get These New Features? - The new class definitions could not be handled by existing version of MoMA, so you will need to download a new version of MoMA, which is available on the MoMA homepage: http://www.mono-project.com/MoMA.
We have just released Mono 1.2.6. Some of the highlights for this release include:
Full details are available on the release notes. To get a copy, visit the downloads section on the web site.
Gert Driesen has announced a major upgrade to NAnt. This release includes many new improvements and you can download source and binaries from here.
