How to install recent mono and monodevelop?

24
votes

I tried to install mono and monodevelop on centOS 6.3. After many hours I was able to install mono but failed with monodevelop.

I'm really astonished how difficult and time consuming it is, to get a recent mono/monodevelop version on linux installed. Is there nobody willing to write and maintain an install/compile tutorial to get the most recent mono/monodevelop/monodata/ASP.NET MVC/... version on the major linux distributions (Centos, Ubuntu, Suse, Debian) installed?

I think many people developing on Windows (with limited linux knowledge) would like to start using mono, if the boarding hurdle would be somehow lower.

It may be the most important to make Mono more used and more visible. Please, write a tested tutorial (script) for compiling mono/monodevelop.

Thank you!

5
monomonodevelop
Search for it, and someone should have already blogged about it. The difficulty is that you still need to know much about Linux and the distribution you use, or you cannot follow.Due to this learning curve, I think currently Xamarin Studio 2 on Mac OS X should be one of the easiest ways to get started. – Lex Li
I searched a lot - but no working answers. – utopia
I'm trying to host ASP.NET MVC4 on CentOS 6.3 and need a recent Monodevelop on that platform for debugging. Xamarin Studio 2 only runs on Windows and Mac, which doesn't help me. – utopia
"no working answers" is not accurate. Every blog posts/article might apply to a working situation in the past, and might ignore some details as the authors might be so familiar with Linux/Mono that they think you should know how to adjust to your special setup. If you are an individual, you have to somehow suffer the pains of learning. If you work for a company, make sure you check out Xamarin's support mono-project.com/Support. – Lex Li
"It may be the most important to make Mono more used and more visible." I can hardly agree on this. Mono on Linux might have been the reason of Novell's purchase of Ximian, but what drives Xamarin today is obviously Mono on iOS/OS X/Android. – Lex Li

5 Answers

22
votes

I have created a project on Open Build Service, which produces builds of the latest MonoDevelop 4.0.10 for Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, and Fedora.

see https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/home:tpokorra:mono

For installation instructions with apt-get or yum, see: http://software.opensuse.org/download/package?project=home:tpokorra:mono&package=monodevelop-opt

I hope this will increase the usage of MonoDevelop on Linux Desktop environments.

4
votes

Monodevelop 4. If you use any *buntu. Check this.

"You can open up the terminal and install it via the following: 

1.    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:keks9n/monodevelop-latest 
2.    sudo apt-get update 
3.    sudo apt-get install monodevelop-latest"

http://mono-d.alexanderbothe.com/?p=101

3
votes

Xamarin should be doing a better job at publishing the linux packages in a one-click manner. I don't care what linux distro (SuSE, RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu etc) - just pick any one as the supported one and publish for it. It seemed that it used to be SuSE but even that has old packages as seen within Zypper/YaST.

Update Mono framework

Having said that, to update the Mono framework itself, without letting go of the package managers try this. This will work as long as the project dutifully publishes the RPMs. You don't want to build from source since it's a more fickle process and the setup distracts from your real objective (i.e. develop).

Obviously, please replace the URL below to what will be latest by the time you're reading this.

mkdir mono-rpms
cd mono-rpms
wget --reject "index.html*" -nd -r -e robots=off --no-parent http://download.mono-project.com/archive/3.2.3/linux/x64/
sudo zypper install *rpm

Update MonoDevelop (the IDE)

Timotheus Pokorra's answer indicates he's filling in some of the usability void left by Xamarin (Thanks Timotheus!!). You can install MonoDevelop via

http://software.opensuse.org/download/package?project=home:tpokorra:mono&package=monodevelop-opt

Note that on SuSE I get the error

Problem: nothing provides liberation-mono-fonts needed by mono-libgdiplus-opt-3.0.12-7.1.x86_64
Solution 1: do not install monodevelop-opt-4.0.12-5.2.x86_64 
Solution 2: break mono-libgdiplus-opt-3.0.12-7.1.x86_64 by ignoring some of its dependencies

I (very reluctantly) selected to break the dependency. Note that I already had liberation-fonts (via sudo zypper install liberation-fonts). I don't know if its the same/different as liberation-mono-fonts. Anyway, hope Timotheus fixes it when he has a moment.

1
votes

I'm not sure if you've already seen this, but this may help:

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

The most common problem that new developers have when coming to Linux from systems like Windows is not properly setting up their environment variables and so when they do the standard ./configure && make && make install routine, when it involves a number of source packages (like Mono does), any package that depends on the core package won't pick up the correct location for that base package.

Your question really doesn't explain what parts you found confusing or difficult so it's hard to address those issues.

For people unfamiliar with setting up Linux systems, it may be easier if you just go with a system like Ubuntu which has fairly recent pre-built packages (although not the latest - I don't think any Linux system keeps up with Mono releases) rather than wrestling with the learning curve of how to build everything yourself.

0
votes

It is confirmed that in the near future Xamarin will support Linux and provide binaries (mono and mainline applications) for Debian and Centos derivatives, and their are already packages for Debian and Centos derivatives for technical preview. So cheers and no more pain of compiling and even parallel mono installaions.It can not get more easy than this. Check here