SharpDevelop Community

Hi all!

#D is a great software and I think it should be more portable that it is at the moment. I mean #D could only be ran under MS Windows. However it seems to me that there's no need at all to use any platform invokes. It whould be much more reasonable to make it comply with CLI specification whithout using any unmanaged code.

For example, eliminating dependancy on p/invokes whould allow an easier porting to Linux with the help of a Mono project.

I think development team should consider a pure .NET release in the future. Removing some nice-looking UI features is a fair price for extended portability.

It's not about some nice-looking UI features.

The docking library we use makes extensive use of P/Invoke. And in most cases, there's no good Windows-Forms alternative, e.g. for tracking focus changes.

The only way to make SharpDevelop run on Linux would be a nearly-complete UI rewrite. And that already was done several years ago and now is called MonoDevelop.

And speaking of platforms - we are currently working on WPF and WF designers, and those won't be available on Mono for a long time either. With the fork of MonoDevelop we decided to concentrate our efforts to create a great IDE for Windows.

Chris 

Hey,

 i noticed there is alot of discussion about getting SharpDevelop IDE to run off the mono framework itself. I get that you are pushing ahead with WPF, etc - thats great.

i have started a thread on DockPanle to try to get some support fro looking at replaceing the specific Native Calls. There are only about 15 in the current trunk, and the calls in the main code to it are very few. Maybe only 15 again. So as a refactoring exercise its really quite easy. The hard bit is replacing those native calls.
So, perhaps maybe some of the high level UI support should be deprecated (and wrapped) out of it for now (such as Drag drop, etc) - this will get it working on mono. Then, as the mono team are advancing on their paint.NET port , some good native call wrappering will come out.

i know Miguel over at the mono framework has done extensive research and work in this area.

A meeting of minds and will on this is all that might be required to make this all work.

Regards

ged 

I couldn't believe it when i heard Paint.NET had been .net-ized.  It gave me great hope for other applications :)

 Honestly, this is the only thing keeping me from running linux as my main OS.  (well that and photoshop, but i could probably wine photoshop). 

 MonoDevelop just doesn't cut it, since I need to be doing System.Windows.Forms stuff (that's not to say i don't appreciate the effort, it's a fine application otherwise)

 
I'm terribly interested in this idea.
 

As far as non-native support for drag and drop tab controls, I should like to think it sounds perfectly reasonable with the resources at hand; I'm pretty sure people are just comfortable with doing it the way it's always been done. I'm not saying it's easy, or that it's as fast (which would be the secondary concern).

http://blogs.sun.com/geertjan/entry/breathing_life_into_a_dead  <- This blog shows some of the nicer drag and drop tab features of NetBeans IDE, which is, for the most part pure Java, which to me means it's doable in .NET, even if Java code has to be ported(all necessary resources should be open source), it's doable. The existing toolbar docking manager in .NET should be modifiable, then when Mono has a .NET 2.0 implementation completed if you simply override many of the existing methods to provide additional support instead of subclassing and windows APIs it would just be a better design decision and nicer reusable code.

If there is concern for catching focus changes and the like perhaps somebody should look into the feasibility of using WndProc manually...

Beyond all that, I honestly think SharpDevelop could take some very beneficial cues from NetBeans. It's obvious they're backed by very well organized people and they've had a lot of progressive ideas. I'm not saying do everything they do, the NetBeans Platform is not the same as the SharpDevelop Platform (nice name though, right? lol), but many ideas still seam feasible. The concept of distributing "Packs" sounds great, with separated packages for CF, Reporting, Enterprise Pack, etc. It could diversify down the line so that there was a XNA Development pack.

I'd also love to see better ASP.NET integration and testing support. Ideally you should be able to host a server using System.Web.Hosting; Visual studio seems to use an external executable (<Windows Directory>\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.<*>\Webdev.WebServer.exe) which I imagine it runs in a separate AppDomain and attaches to the various trace and debug lines. I think the inability to debug ASP.NET applications (or provide code completion to aspx files, and it's incomplete template definitions) is probably holding it back a lot. Especially with service oriented architecture making a lot of headway.

Just my thoughts on the matter;

Hi TheXenocide ,

• The major difference between NetBeans and SharpDevelop is that SharpDevelop doesn't have big support as Sun for NetBeans.
• Another reason is that most of the open source people doesn't prefer .net, simply because it MS technology.
  
• For the same reason the most of the (big) companies are behind java, it slowing down development of open source .Net tools.
• Look at Mono only Novell is officially supporting it ( as per my knowledge - correct me).
• FOSS people get away from Novell because of deal with MS. Although this deal has help Mono people very much.(Did u know Moonlight is developed in 15 days- Silverlight on Linux)