How to build MonoDevelop with Visual Studio in five easy steps:

• Install GTK# (get installer here)
• Install the Mono Libraries (get installer here)
• Get MonoDevelop from SVN (update: instructions here)
  
• Open main/Main.sln in Visual Studio
• Press F5 (update: make sure you have the configuration DebugWin32 and platform x86 selected).
  

A new MonoDevelop installer for Windows is available. This release has many fixes and improvements:

• Performance of the text editor greatly improved, thanks to a new text rendering logic cooked by Mike Krüeger.
• The debugger is now more reliable, it properly handles enum values, and it now has an 'immediate' console.
• The NUnit add-in now works.
• Version Control now has a new Create Patch command, thanks to Levi Bard.
• A new C# formatter, with support for per-project/solution formatting options.
  
• MD now logs debug and error output to a file located in your AppData/MonoDevelop/log.txt, so if you get a crash or something you may find some info there.
• Many other bug fixes.

The new installer is available here. Worth trying!

Since my last blog post about MonoDevelop on Windows, things have improved a lot. I focused my work in making MD good enough to be used for everyday MD hacking. We are still not there, but close. Here are some improvements done in the past week:

• Fixed the GTK# designer add-in. It is now fully working.
• Implemented a new backend for the Subversion add-in. I tried using the add-in we have for Linux, but the libraries I could find for Win32 have some differences in the API and the bindings doesn't work. I finally decided to refactor a bit the SVN add-in to support different backends, and implemented a new one based on SharpSvn. So the SVN add-in is also fully working.
  
• Added support for debugging, based on the debugger that comes with .NET. This is still work in progress, although most of features already work: stepping, breakpoints, inspecting variables with drill down and evaluation of expressions.
  
• Support for .NET 4.0. This new version can now be selected in the project properties.
• Improved the look of the main window. Reduced some spacing, improved the rendering of the tabs when docking several pads together, and other cosmetic fixes.
  
• Improved the performance of the text editor. It now feels more responsive.
• ... and many other fixes.
  

There are still some stability issues, and are several add-ins are still untested, but MD is starting to look great on Windows. GTK+ with the Vista theme looks really nice. Here are some screenshots of the GTK# designer and the debugger:





Now, here is what you've been waiting for: a MonoDevelop installer for Windows. You can get it from the Windows Preview page in the MD site. Read carefully the instructions in that page. You'll have to install the latest GTK# package, also linked in that page. Also, beware that this is a preview built from trunk, so you can expect to find stability issues. In any case, bug reports are always welcome. Enjoy!