Article:		Porting a Project from Visual Studio .NET to Mono
Subject:		Try a more modern version...
Date:		2005-06-14 00:17:06
From:		schwuk
I know you were using the version most easily available to you, but I'd fully recommend trying a more modern version of Mono. The project maintainers themselves recommend the use of the 1.1 development branch over the 1.0 stable branch as this is now where all effort is concentrated. With 1.1 you'll also get the new Managed.Windows.Forms namespace which is implementing System.Windows.Forms in 100% managed code. There are .debs available for Debian Unstable, but there are also the Mono bundles (available from the Mono website) and Mono is incredibly easy to compile yourself - there are bunch of guides out there to help (I wrote one for Ubuntu). So...interesting article, but shamefully out-of-date.

Showing messages 1 through 2 of 2.

• Managers will disagree...
  2005-06-14 14:18:58  kfarnham [Reply | View]
  
  
  A developer who's working/hacking Mono for fun will certainly want to work with the latest version. But consider a VP of Development who is charged with deciding whether an existing .NET application should be ported to Mono. A suggestion to this person that she/he replace Visual Studio .NET with a version of Mono that has to be built from source will clearly go nowhere!
  
  The issue is stability. A company that is experimenting with Linux might chose the Debian platform because of it's slow and careful release cycle, which yields the reliability Debian is known for. With respect to Mono, the assumption is going to be that the most stable Mono on Debian will be the version that is available using the package manager on the most stable Debian release.
  
  In "selecting" Mono Version 1.0.5 for the article, I duplicated the decision that a development manager likely would have made for porting an application that has some mission criticality. For operational applications that are integrated into your daily business activity, you don't immediately jump to the latest development version. You can't afford to be so experimental. Instead, you look for a version that has gone through a reasonable testing cycle, where the most significant and blatant bugs have been addressed -- even if that version is missing some nice features that are available in later releases.
  
  So, from a Development Manager's point of view, is the article "shamefully out-of-date"? I don't think so.
  
  
• Managers will disagree...
  2005-08-30 14:11:01  migueldeicaza [Reply | View]
  
  
  Well, a manager would probably pick the officially supported version of Mono, and that version happens to be 1.1.8.
  
  Thats the official position of the Mono team at Novell.
  
  If the manager cared about this, he would know a few things: that Mono 1.1.x has four times as much tests built into it, and that Mono 1.1.x has gone through Novell's hardening process which includes various flavors of testing for use in its own client and server products and have passed rigurous tests on the Novell Superlab having hundreds of mono client applications hitting Mono servers and ironing out all the bugs.
  
  Mono 1.0.x was retired due to this kind of testing and that is why every user is encouraged to use the 1.1.x series.
  
  The 1.1.x code base is hardened now in branches, and when the code is hardened and tested it is landed.
  
  Miguel.