What version of C# is used by Mono 2.6.4? - c#

Perhaps (hopefully) I'm missing something obvious, but I can't see from the Mono site what version of C# is used for any particular version of Mono, and as a C# newbie I'm not sure how to find out directly myself.
My specific question is: what version of C# is used by Mono 2.6.4? (The reason I'm interested in that version is that it seems to be the base version of the Mono variant used by the current version of Unity 3D.)

The release notes have this to say:
If Mono 2.6.1 is configured with the preview mode, you will also get early access to Mono's C# 4.0 implementation. This implementation is now available as part of the dmcs command.
C# 4.0 named arguments and optional parameters have been fully implemented.
So, to be safe, keep to C# 3.0 features.

It seems to use 4.0 by the looks of this

Related

Saxonica 9.7 HE in C#

I'm trying to get Saxon 9.7 HE up and running in C#, and failing miserably.
As per instructions, I am downloading and running https://sourceforge.net/projects/saxon/files/Saxon-HE/9.7/SaxonHE9-7-0-14N-setup.exe/download
This installs a bunch of files into C:\Program Files\Saxonica\SaxonHE9.7N.
In the bin folder inside this one, the following files are present:
No matter which DLLs I add as references to my project, the "using Saxon.Api;" reference fails to resolve.
Am I using the correct DLLs here? Is it some sort of .Net version mismatch? My class library project is set to .Net 3.5 currently.
Thanks for any help
The minimum supported version of .NET for Saxon is indeed 4.0.
The bug is in the documentation which will be updated shortly: See bug issue: https://saxonica.plan.io/issues/3085
Thanks for reporting the issue.
Some guess work here. But the dependency on .net 4 is most likley from the compiling of the C# wrapper over the saxon java library that was converted using IKVM. IKVM says it only requires .net 2.0, so I think the only place that dependancy can come from is the saxon9he-api.
You should be able to build this yourself, its quite thin.
https://dev.saxonica.com/repos/archive/opensource/latest9.7/hen/csource/api/Saxon.Api/
Otherwise if its a show stopper ask Michael Kay (the author), he's pretty active on stack overflow.
Updated
I was curious so I checked, the .Net 4 dependency seems to come from the saxon9he-api (which i'm fairly certain could be re-compiled under 3.5 with no/minimal changes), the same for the Query and Transform exe's.

Can't get Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll for Mono 2.10

I've been trying to port a .NET library built on/for Windows to Ubuntu 11.04 using Mono. The library uses .NET 4.0 so the version of mono (2.6.7) that is standard with Ubuntu 11.04 doesn't cut it. Specifically, I'm trying to use Microsoft.VisualBasic.Devices.Computer.Info.TotalPhysicalMemory. I've searched high and low for packages or parallel build scripts that install Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll, but none of them do.
Ideally I'd like to find a way to get the best of both worlds, Mono with .NET 4.0 support and Microsoft.VisualBasic so that the code won't have to be modified. I would settle for an alternative that uses another method (although, the P/Invoke method I saw in this previous post does not appeal to me).
Any help is greatly appreciated.
It looks like getting VB.dll won't help you either. This method is not implemented in Mono:
https://github.com/mono/mono-basic/blob/master/vbruntime/Microsoft.VisualBasic/Microsoft.VisualBasic.Devices/ComputerInfo.vb
You could try to fool Cudafy by creating your own version of the DLL.
Use reflector or check here to see the interface
https://github.com/mono/mono-basic/blob/master/vbruntime/Microsoft.VisualBasic/Microsoft.VisualBasic.Devices/ComputerInfo.vb
You can use a performance counter on Mono to actually get the amount of memory;
var pc = new PerformanceCounter("Mono Memory", "Total Physical Memory");
var mem = pc.RawValue();
You can use the MoMA tool to check how compatible mono is for your project.
In your particular case the method you need isn't implemented, if that's the only thing preventing your project from working, you can implement it, and build and provide your own MS.VB.dll until mono releases a version with the change in it. Once you've built mono-basic it's simple to install on any machine (with mono already installed), just run:
gacutil -i path/to/MS.VB.dll
and the dll will be installed into the gac.

Call Mono C# Compiler

For calling MS C# compiler there is CSharpCodeProvider (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.csharp.csharpcodeprovider.aspx)
but how do I call the Mono compiler?
I want to know if there was any errors after compilation.
Mono has a better approach available (which should be provided in .NET 5 probably),
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2008/Sep-10.html
I have not used Mono, but a quick Bing turned up the following Microsoft.CSharp.CSharpCodeProvider in the Mono documentation, is it possible that Mono implements the functionality targeting the Mono C# compiler.
You should take a look at MonoDevelop. It's full featured IDE for the Mono project, speaking of C#, F# and others. You can create a project, generate the classes, paste your source and it'll take care of everything.
Speaking of the compiler:
It's called mcs if you exported mono to your PATH. man mcs/mcs --help.
Probably using Microsoft.CSharp.dll from Mono will call Mono's implementation of Microsoft C# compiler which is the same as Microsoft's.
To call Mono specific features of C# compiler use Mono.CSharp.dll

How to run C# project under Linux

Do you know any ways to run a C# project under Linux. Are there any framewoks or libraries for this?
You're looking for the Mono Project - a cross-platform (but primarily targeted at Linux) implementation of the .NET Framework and CLR. It's capable of running binaries compiled for the CLR (MS .NET), or of creating its own native Linux binaries.
The project has been going a while now, and it's current version (2.4) is very usable, even for production purposes. See the project roadmap for details of the main features and milestones of current and future releases.
Details about the current state:
The great majority of the BCL (Base Class Library) is available on Mono, with the exception of some of the .NET 3.0/3.5 stuff, such as WPF (which has minimal support currently) and WCF (almost non-existent support). Silverlight 2.0 is however being supported via the Moonlight project, and progress on that is going well. WinForms functionality (which uses GTK# as a backend) is however quite complete, as far as I know.
Implementation of the C# 3.0 language is effectively complete, including the C# 3.0 features such as lambda expressions, LINQ, and automatic properties. I believe the C# compiler is mature to the point that its efficiency is at least comparable with that of the MS compiler, though not yet matching it in some respects. What's quite cool (and unique) about the Mono C# compiler is that is now offers a compiler service - in other words true dynamic compilation from code (without using the CodeDOM). This is something that MS will perhaps only add in .NET 5.0.
Like others have already said, you can run .NET applications on Mono. If your applications use Platform Invocation (P/Invoke) to call native code, you may run into some trouble if there is no Mono implementation of the native library. To check whether your application does that (or uses APIs that haven't been implemented in Mono yet), you can use the Mono Migration Analyzer (MoMA).
For those who come across this question post 2016, can use .NET Core - An open-source, general-purpose development platform maintained by Microsoft and the .NET community on GitHub. It's cross-platform (supporting Windows, macOS, and Linux) and can be used to build device, cloud, and IoT applications.

Cross platform programming on Windows

Two Questions:
Is there any way to write cross platform programs on Microsoft Visual Studio?
If there isn't then could I write a C# application on VS2008 and recompile it with MonoDevelop and have it work?
1 - I dont' think so. Not without something like Mono.
2 - Yes you can, but Mono doesn't cover all the framework - they are working on it.
The best thing to do is check with the Mono Migration Analyzer. The Mono Migration Analyzer (MoMA) tool helps you identify issues you may have on Mono - http://mono-project.com/MoMA.
I have found most of my .NET 2.0 applications can be converted, but you may need some tweaks.
You can always use C++ and QT. Soon QT will be released on LGPL license (from version 4.5) that will give some more freedom.
The only limit of using free QT license is that you don't get integration with VS. However this can be handled by using eg. CMake (which will generate VS solution files).
Yes, Write your code, compile and run on another platform using Mono. When you compile you generate IL, which Mono can use. Note: Some functions aren't available on Mono. Delphi Prism, is an add on for Visual Studio which allows you to code to Linux and Mac from VS albeit in the object Pascal language though.
Yes, see same issues as in 1
I agree with Joe90, just one thing he left out: MonoDevelop can compile .sln and .csproj files because it has a MSBuild implementation.
So point MoMA at your code and if you get a green light it should compile as-is in MonoDevelop.
As a MSCLR junkie I have to admit that Mono has a few 'better' implementations of certain critical functions (mostly to do with encryption). You will get more usability power from these.
Another thing to watch out for is subtle logic errors. If a class is implemented in Mono it does not mean that it will behave the same the MSCLR one (Mono is a cold-room implementation and as such they DO NOT use the original source code). This is really where you will get good results from a well unit-tested code base.
For a good indication of what you should expect, I remember seeing a large amount of #if MONO in the AgsXMPP repository.
You could ideally write a C# application and have it run on the Mono platform. BUT, that will depend on the libraries of MS .NET that has been ported yet to Mono.
Just in case, there is no language constraint, you could consider using other languages like Java, Python, Ruby and the like..
Good Luck!
As many others mention your success will depend on the libraries you use. Mono does have Winforms but I would suggest that you also look at GTK# http://www.mono-project.com/GtkSharp as your windowing library. If you use GTK# you will use a library which is not reverse engineered (as Winforms is in Mono).
My understanding is that "non-gui" .NET 2.0 stuff is pretty much in place with the newest versions of Mono
You don't need mono develop, the whole idea of mono is you can develop for .net and have the same assemblies work on both mono and .net, provided you only use stuff which has been implemented in mono.
Stuff which won't work:
pinvoke,
wpf,
linq to SQL
Stuff which will work:
.net 2.0,
c# 3.0 (including linq to objects and linq to xml),
winforms
If you write your application in Silverlight, anyone with a web browser and the Silverlight plugin can access your app. This is as cross-platform as you're going to get with .NET.

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