Wednesday, June 3, 2009

MonoDevelop installer for Windows

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!

39 comments:

Sandy said...

Incredible work! Can't wait to try this out, <3 consistency across all my platforms. :-)

Anonymous said...

you guys rock!

Anonymous said...

I'm not afraid anymore of being hired again in a company in which I'm forced to use Windows :)

djp said...

I am getting a "Add-in manager not initialized." exception when I try to run it?

Michael Hutchinson said...

llui: congrats on the preview release!

djp: The are probably older versions of GTK#/GTK+ in your PATH. Make sure you remove all older versions of GTK#.

djp said...

Michael: Cheers.. that worked like a charm!

it is probably worth putting this note in the release notes or on the download page, I imagine alot of people who try this will have gtk installed

spoody_goon said...

Thank you so much for your hard work. Even if it is unstable you have made incredible progress. I have been waiting for a chance to work with this for some time now.

Thanks Again!

Spoody Goon

Anonymous said...

Fantastic work! I've been waiting a long time for this. Much appreciated. :-)

Jens said...

Great work! =)

koubel@seznam.cz said...

Nice work, ide with gtk# designer for win fills a gap between winform, which is not much supported by MS nowadays and currently not so matured WPF

triton said...

Indeed, fantastic work!

johnel said...

Dude! You are a hero!

In many ways I think the mono platform is better that Microsoft's own implementation.

I exclusively use Windows at work as a developer (I am using jedit at the moment) and I have always missed monodevelop on this platform.

Huge thanks for your hardwork and look forward to the day monodevelop is stable on Windows.

I will be installing it tomorrow!

Take Care and keep going MANY people will thank you for this.

Anonymous said...

is IRONRuby supported in Monodevelop?

Jaroslav Šmíd said...

Ok, when you are blogging about this like about sth incredible I guess it is 64bit version ... ooh, it's NOT! It's that 32bit crap. Just stop creating those "glues" when you can't create native version for all the platforms. Just write it in .NET.

And can you make tabs even bigger? Hey, why are they that big? I'm not blind and I'd like them to be as big as native tabs. I know you gonna ignore me and delete this comment, but maybe it'll help you and sth sleeping deep inside of you will wake up.

Lluis said...

@Anonymous: no, there isn't support for IronRuby. Interested in contributing?

@Jaroslav Šmíd: don't worry, I don't intend to delete your comment. It's too funny.

gimgol said...

Can't seem to get code completion working. I am using the default HelloWorld that the MD creates when you select a Console application. I type 'Console.' and get either nothing or 'Gathering class information ...' but nothing ever comes up. System is referenced, Code Completion is checked along with Aggressively trigger and Commit completion selection. Anyone have thoughts / suggestions? Thanks.

Leo said...

Thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks.

Now I can use my favorite IDE even when forced to use Windows.

I'll try out some interop stuff and come back to you on this.

Anonymous said...

sorry if this is n00bish, but is there a winforms designer? or plans?

Philippe said...

Lluis, I've been waiting for MD on Windows for about 4 years :)

I understand there are a lot of things to tweak but I'm a little worried about the "graphical performance" of the application, even on a high end PC - I hope this is something that will eventually improve.

Lluis said...

@Philippe: are you having graphical performance issues? I haven't noticed those, and my Windows PC is not high-end.

Mihai said...

Do I need mono installed, or should this work with the basic .NET ? Every time I run MD i get a message saying MD has stopped working..

Miha Vrhovnik said...

On My Vista x64 box it starts only if I run it as administrator, otherwise it crashes with

Problem Event Name: CLR20r3
Problem Signature 01: monodevelop.exe
Problem Signature 02: 2.1.0.0
Problem Signature 03: 4a26934e
Problem Signature 04: MonoDevelop.Core
Problem Signature 05: 2.1.0.0
Problem Signature 06: 4a269338
Problem Signature 07: 260
Problem Signature 08: 8a
Problem Signature 09: System.TypeInitialization
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1060

Olivier Dagenais said...

Wicked stuff, keep up the good work!

- Oli

Philippe said...

That's strange - I guess it's exagerated to say that MD graphical perf is slow (the app seems fast in general).

But there is something subtle that makes it feel not "snappy" and that was my first impression when exploring a few .NET projects with MD.

Firstly, something with the caret: when you click in the document the caret doesn't appear immediately, but only after a second. This is misleading because it is possible to type immediately.

Also, the tips flicker when hovering a word (especially when moving the cursor with the tip visible).

Then in general, scrolling/folding the editor code is not very "fluid".

Last remark: I think some work should be done on "colors", they just don't look right under Win7.

Continue the great work on MD! I'll try again building MD from source.

Dave said...

is the best day of my life...
Good job

Lluis said...

@Philippe: yes, there is room for improvement in the editor. We are working on it. Regarding the colors, you can change the color scheme in View/Preferences/Text Editor.

Anonymous said...

Gracias Lluis, it seems that finally we have a simple tool for developing cross-platform.

I successfully compile TASQUE for Windows, only one problem: the refresh in the Build Output window is too slow and sometimes hangs while compiling MonoDevelop or when log shows the compilation.

Looking forward to a more stable version, though this is already a promising future ...

Animos ...

Bomas2007 said...

How long i can get it, I ca't wait any longer

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