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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!

utopia
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    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 Mar 02 '13 at 23:33
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    I searched a lot - but no working answers. – utopia Mar 03 '13 at 10:03
  • 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 Mar 03 '13 at 10:08
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    "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 http://mono-project.com/Support. – Lex Li Mar 03 '13 at 11:07
  • "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 Mar 03 '13 at 11:10
  • possible duplicate of [Installing Mono 3.0](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13365158/installing-mono-3-0) – Artem Koshelev Mar 18 '13 at 18:24

5 Answers5

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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.

Timotheus Pokorra
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  • There is an unclean dependency issue with the build: `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` – DeepSpace101 Oct 13 '13 at 16:32
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    This is great. Worked flawlessly on Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit. But why isn't /opt/mono/bin added to the PATH? Would be nice to have `mono` command available on the terminal after installing the package. – Sergiy Belozorov Nov 17 '13 at 18:30
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    @SergiyByelozyorov: to include the path, you can call /opt/mono/env.sh in your .bash_profile file – Timotheus Pokorra Nov 19 '13 at 08:06
  • @Sid: which Linux Distribution do you get this dependancy issue with? Update: sorry, I see below that it is Suse. I guess I will fix the dependancy, and use the name liberation-fonts – Timotheus Pokorra Nov 19 '13 at 08:07
  • @TimotheusPokorra: Yes, that would work. I was just thinking this could be done automatically. The default mono package in Ubuntu does add mono into PATH. – Sergiy Belozorov Nov 20 '13 at 15:19
  • Hi, I followed the steps above to install monodevelop-opt. They are OK, but when I try to compile a VB.NET sample, i get the following error: /opt/mono/lib/mono/4.0/Microsoft.VisualBasic.targets: Error: Error executing tool '/opt/mono/bin/vbnc': ApplicationName='/opt/mono/bin/vbnc', (etc.) Native error= Cannot find the specified file (etc.). I guess Visual Basic.NET support is not included in mono-opt. Any idea on how to fix it? – Stefano Fenu Feb 04 '14 at 15:41
  • @StefanoFenu: I have now added a package mono-basic-opt, which should provide vbnc. Please let me know if that works! I have based it on the latest checkout from github. – Timotheus Pokorra Feb 07 '14 at 15:29
  • @TimotheusPokorra I tried installing monodevelop-opt on rhel 6.5 Workstation with the Fedora 20 option and it gives me this error: Error: Package: mono-opt-3.2.8-3.2.x86_64 (home_tpokorra_mono) Requires: libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.15)(64bit) Error: Package: mono-opt-devel-3.2.8-3.2.x86_64 (home_tpokorra_mono) Requires: libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.15)(64bit) Is there any way to fix this? Best I can see the package is installed: glibc-2.12-1.132.el6.i686 : The GNU libc libraries Repo : installed Matched from: Other : Provides-match: libc.so.6 – somethingSomething Mar 19 '14 at 17:41
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    @somethingSomething: Please use my monodevelop-opt packages for CentOS6. CentOS6 is the RHEL6 clone, and therefore the packages are compatible. Fedora is related to RHEL, but only in the sense that it is driven by Redhat and the community, but it has quicker releases than RHEL. – Timotheus Pokorra Mar 21 '14 at 06:24
  • Is there a possibility to get an official RPM for redhat? I don't like this installing in /opt. Why not overriding the old stuff? – Sven Apr 10 '14 at 11:31
  • @TimotheusPokorra Are you or when are you going to include Fedora 21/rawhide in your setup? opensuse repo for mono and monodevelop – somethingSomething Apr 20 '14 at 05:05
  • I really would be happy to see an official Fedora RPM, since mono is such a wonderful thing :). – Sven Apr 22 '14 at 16:53
  • @somethingSomething: I am using https://build.opensuse.org, which provides many released Linux distros, but not yet Fedora 21/rawhide. – Timotheus Pokorra Apr 23 '14 at 10:50
  • @somethingSomething, and Sven: have a look at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Mono_3.4 Here are links to repos by Claudio to install the latest Mono and Monodevelop on Fedora 20 and 21: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/mono/2014-April/000490.html – Timotheus Pokorra Apr 23 '14 at 10:58
  • Good work, Timotheus! This should *REALLY* appear in the mono-project.org site (i.e. the official Mono site) - the Download section should, at the very least, add a link to this! – ttsiodras Sep 11 '14 at 09:15
  • @ttsiodras: it has in fact been added to http://www.mono-project.com/download/#download-lin, see section Community packages – Timotheus Pokorra Sep 12 '14 at 10:34
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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

David Brabant
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Peter G Holm
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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.

DeepSpace101
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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.

jstedfast
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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

shahid.pk
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