SharpDevelop Community

Hi I would like to install #develop on the Kubuntu 6.06 Linux Operating System. I have already downloaded the Source Code of it but I have no idea how to go further because there is no *.deb or *.rpm file Does anybody know how to do this? Thank you for your help in advance Kai

Erm... SharpDevelop is for Windows, not for *nix. There is a fork of SharpDevelop that runs on *nix: MonoDevelop.

Crhis 

There's a fair number of pInvokes (calls from .NET to the Windows API) in the SharpDevelop code base. Therefore it will not run on Linux as it is. Maybe it can be got to compile and run using WINE as an emulation layer...

I'm not sure it will work, but it might be worth a try. 

SharpDevelop uses Windows Forms controls that aren't yet fully supported by Mono and assumes that P/Invoke calls work with handles for Windows Forms controls. That means it surely will fail on Linux.

With the level of Windows Forms support Mono currently has, it might be possible to get rid of the P/Invoke calls and port SharpDevelop to Linux, but that would be duplicated effort because there is already MonoDevelop. (well, having MonoDevelop/SharpDevelop separately is already duplicated effort, if we also count the MonoDevelop for Windows port, another port of SharpDevelop to Linux would actually be quadruplicated effort)

Thank you very much for all your help. I didn't know Mono Develop.

MonoDevelop as alternative for SharpDevelop is like notepad as alternative for some office suit! The winforms implementation of mono is quite complete presently, so maybe it would be a nice idea to try and fix the P/Invoke calls... I really have no idea what size of changes are required for this, but I think really really many people would like SharpDevelop to work under Linux...

Thanks for your kind and optimistic words. 

As SharpDevelop (2.x) is licensed under the LGPL, anybody can go and attempt such a port.

Basically, what would be needed is an abstraction layer to isolate the GUI stuff from the underlying OS. For now, for example there is the docking library we use. This is heavily dependent on the Windows platform APIs. This would basically mean the current library needs to be ripped out, replaced by something platform agnostic and then the platform dependent abstraction layers would need to be written to go beneath that to handle the messy details.

Another issue that immediately springs to mind is the build system used - how far is mono on that? I personally have no idea. And I am quite certain that with a little digging, even more nasties will be found.

Alas, we only ever hear that it would be so nice to have SharpDevelop run on Linux, but no Linux/mono developers have as of now expressed any desire to actively implement SharpDevelop/L or at least contribute their expertise to make this a reality...

All true!

I just downloaded the SharpDevelop source and errr you've got a real point about the build system... What is available for Linux/Mono? Well NAnt should work, though is not yet at a 1.0 version... and ofcourse there is err ehm "make". I guess NAnt would be the only available option, and I think it would be good enough. But actually what is needed are only the final binaries, since mono is able to run them (i.e. if they don't use the windows API) - binaries are exchangeable between windows/.NET and Mono. It would however make it a lot more testable if it would also compile on mono ofcourse.

 Why are the native Windows API's used by the way? Wouldn't it be nicer to only use the .NET SDK? Is it because the SDK doesn't implement the necessary things or...?

 The Linux gurus ofcourse can't contribute to SharpDevelop, because they have no environment ;) ok kidding. I am willing and would be able to contribute somewhat, but I'm not sure I have enough expertise about the Windows libraries or SharpDevelop itself - the only experience that I got with C# are from Linux with Mono and MonoDevelop.

Hi,

I don't know MonoDevelop, but why is there a MonoDevelop for Windows, since SharpDevelop can access Mono? Is MD for Windows better than SD or has it any features that SD has not?

Would like to know this.

regards,

Siegfried 

MonoDevelop does have some features that SharpDevelop does not (e.g. integration with autotools), but I would say SharpDevelop is way more complete and feature rich. The primary reason to fork to MonoDevelop was to support all platforms.

anoko:

 Why are the native Windows API's used by the way? Wouldn't it be nicer to only use the .NET SDK? Is it because the SDK doesn't implement the necessary things or...?

 The Linux gurus ofcourse can't contribute to SharpDevelop, because they have no environment ;) ok kidding. I am willing and would be able to contribute somewhat, but I'm not sure I have enough expertise about the Windows libraries or SharpDevelop itself - the only experience that I got with C# are from Linux with Mono and MonoDevelop.

The .net SDK indeed does not offer all of the functionality. This is quite obvious in the docking library for example. We did use NAnt once upon a time, but it proved to be a "moving target" as it still evolves which would result in incompatibilities between SharpDEvelop releases. I guess the source code for that AddIn still floats around somewhere in the repository if you want to give it a spin.
 

(In response to this thread I started a thread in Architecture Discussions...)

[Begin Edit]

When I originally posted this, the original post was all that was showing.  So forgive me if it seems to ignore points brought up since then. 

[End Edit] 

I'm not convinced that it's impossible yet, but I tried compiling #Develop with Mono and ran into a few snags.  The biggest snag was that the *.cmbx and *.prjx files aren't the same format as the MonoDevelop (*.mds and *.mdp) file formats (Close, but not quite the same).  MonoDevelop can read the #Develop projects, but wants to convert each one.  There's something fishy with the conversion process, though, because all it takes is one error and it tries to reconvert every project again.

 At any rate, the problem I've found so far is that one of the projects for #Develop requires access to the System.Data.Query (?) namespace, which Mono doesn't support yet.  This namespace *CAN* be found in one of the sub-projects from www.monoproject.com, but that project is highly unstable, since it's constantly changing.

I had planned on either finding a way to convert each of the #Develop projects by hand until each one compiled or just wait for Mono 2.0 to be released.  I'm hoping that once either of those occur that I will have #Develop up and running.  MonoDevelop is nice, but it just doesn't do what I need it to do.  I work with Visual Studio 2005 all day long at work, so MonoDevelop is severely lacking when it comes to this.

I guess we can all just cross our fingers and hope that someone from #Develop will fix it so that it will compile with Mono 1.x :)