My first taste of Mono on openSUSE 11.1

-
Verdict: not so tasty

I grabbed all the Mono packages via YaST and installed them without problems. I then fired up monodevelop in a terminal so I could watch for warnings and errors. I'm glad I did.

I won't bore you with screen shots of creating a simple 'Hello world' application. I will say that monodevelop is crashy. For example, without having created anything, I attempted to see what the Classes tab on the left side of the IDE would produce if opened. Normally it should be blank; that's what every other IDE in the known universe shows. Instead MonoDevelop crashed and exited. Hmmm...

After the second startup I created the simple 'Hello World' project as a console program with Gtk# extensions. I didn't add any other code. I then had the project build and run within the IDE. During that entire time I got a stream of error messages, such as the following sample:
ERROR [2008-12-22 10:49:57Z]: Mono.CompilerServices.SymbolWriter.MonoSymbolFileException: Cannot read symbol file `/usr/lib/mono/gac/pango-sharp/2.12.0.0__35e10195dab3c99f/pango-sharp.dll.mdb'
at Mono.CompilerServices.SymbolWriter.MonoSymbolFile..ctor (System.String filename) [0x00000]
at Mono.CompilerServices.SymbolWriter.MonoSymbolFile..ctor (System.String filename, Mono.Cecil.AssemblyDefinition assembly) [0x00000]
at Mono.CompilerServices.SymbolWriter.MonoSymbolFile.ReadSymbolFile (Mono.Cecil.AssemblyDefinition assembly, System.String filename) [0x00000]
at Mono.Cecil.Mdb.MdbFactory.CreateReader (Mono.Cecil.ModuleDefinition module, System.String assembly) [0x00000]
at MonoDevelop.Projects.Parser.AssemblyInformation.Load (System.String fileName, Boolean nonLocking) [0x00000]
ERROR [2008-12-22 10:49:57Z]: Mono.CompilerServices.SymbolWriter.MonoSymbolFileException: Cannot read symbol file `/usr/lib/mono/gac/atk-sharp/2.12.0.0__35e10195dab3c99f/atk-sharp.dll.mdb'
at Mono.CompilerServices.SymbolWriter.MonoSymbolFile..ctor (System.String filename) [0x00000]
at Mono.CompilerServices.SymbolWriter.MonoSymbolFile..ctor (System.String filename, Mono.Cecil.AssemblyDefinition assembly) [0x00000]
at Mono.CompilerServices.SymbolWriter.MonoSymbolFile.ReadSymbolFile (Mono.Cecil.AssemblyDefinition assembly, System.String filename) [0x00000]
at Mono.Cecil.Mdb.MdbFactory.CreateReader (Mono.Cecil.ModuleDefinition module, System.String assembly) [0x00000]
at MonoDevelop.Projects.Parser.AssemblyInformation.Load (System.String fileName, Boolean nonLocking) [0x00000]
ERROR [2008-12-22 10:49:58Z]: Mono.CompilerServices.SymbolWriter.MonoSymbolFileException: Cannot read symbol file `/usr/lib/mono/gac/Mono.Posix/2.0.0.0__0738eb9f132ed756/Mono.Posix.dll.mdb'
at Mono.CompilerServices.SymbolWriter.MonoSymbolFile..ctor (System.String filename) [0x00000]
at Mono.CompilerServices.SymbolWriter.MonoSymbolFile..ctor (System.String filename, Mono.Cecil.AssemblyDefinition assembly) [0x00000]
at Mono.CompilerServices.SymbolWriter.MonoSymbolFile.ReadSymbolFile (Mono.Cecil.AssemblyDefinition assembly, System.String filename) [0x00000]
at Mono.Cecil.Mdb.MdbFactory.CreateReader (Mono.Cecil.ModuleDefinition module, System.String assembly) [0x00000]
at MonoDevelop.Projects.Parser.AssemblyInformation.Load (System.String fileName, Boolean nonLocking) [0x00000]
ERROR [2008-12-22 10:50:01Z]: Mono.CompilerServices.SymbolWriter.MonoSymbolFileException: Cannot read symbol file `/usr/lib/mono/2.0/mscorlib.dll.mdb'
at Mono.CompilerServices.SymbolWriter.MonoSymbolFile..ctor (System.String filename) [0x00000]
at Mono.CompilerServices.SymbolWriter.MonoSymbolFile..ctor (System.String filename, Mono.Cecil.AssemblyDefinition assembly) [0x00000]
at Mono.CompilerServices.SymbolWriter.MonoSymbolFile.ReadSymbolFile (Mono.Cecil.AssemblyDefinition assembly, System.String filename) [0x00000]
at Mono.Cecil.Mdb.MdbFactory.CreateReader (Mono.Cecil.ModuleDefinition module, System.String assembly) [0x00000]
at MonoDevelop.Projects.Parser.AssemblyInformation.Load (System.String fileName, Boolean nonLocking) [0x00000]
I think I'll stick with Java IDEs and emacs. Emacs especially if I want to develop C# on Linux, as MonoDevelop appears to be neither a good editor nor a good IDE. I had thought to install KDevelop, but it's available only built with Qt3/KDE3, and I want a native KDE 4 application, especially with KDevelop. I have half a mind to check out the subversion head and just build it locally. It's currently at alpha 5 release, so that may give me some more excitement.

Comments

  1. UnknownDecember 27, 2008

    I'm sorry your MonoDevelop experience hasn't been great so far. I'm not aware of any reported crashers on 11.1, but if you get stack traces, could you please file bugs so that we can fix them?

    It's been a long time since MD 1.0 was released and in many ways the 2.0 alphas are more stable. I'm building MD trunk builds on the openSUSE Build Sevice, which should be relatively stable until 2.0 is formally released. There's even a 1-click install.

    You maybe also find that some problems are fixed by upgrading GTK# to 2.12.6 from the Mono repository.

    FWIW, the particular errors you've pasted in your post can safely be ignored. Various Mono debug files (.mdb) seem to be missing, but they aren't strictly needed for MD. Maybe the stock oS 11.1 has these in separate packages.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

All comments are checked. Comment SPAM will be blocked and deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

A Decade Long Religious Con Job

-
Image
I rarely write inflammatory (what some might call trolling) titles to a post, but this building you see before you deserves it. I've been seeing this building next to I-4 just east of Altamonte/436 and Crane's Roost for nearly 12 years, and never knew who owned it. Today on a trip up to Lake Mary with my wife I saw it yet again. That's when I told her I wanted to stop by on the way back and poke around the property, and photograph any parts of it if I could. What I discovered was this still unfinished eighteen story (I counted) white elephant, overgrown with weeds and yet still under slow-motion construction. It looks impressive with its exterior glass curtain walls, but that impression is quickly lost when you see the unfinished lower stories and look inside to the unfinished interior spaces. A quick check via Google leads to an article written in 2010 by the Orlando Sentinel about the Majesty Tower. Based on what I read in the article it's owned by SuperChannel ...
Read more

Ten Reasons to Ignore Ten Reasons to Dump Windows and Use Linux

-
There is a tradition amongst the hard-core Linux aficionados to extol Linux's various virtues as a list of 10 or more reasons to substitute (as in "dump") an existing Windows installation with Linux. There's no reason to point them all out; a simple Google search (" 10 reasons to use Linux ") will provide you with such lists stretching back through the years, as well as hours of entertainment. One very recent list caught my eye over the weekend, published by PCWorld. Their article, " Ten Reasons to Dump Windows and Use Linux ", seems to have hit a nerve with me. Normally I just ignore such journalistic pap, since the majority of it comes courtesy of one ill-informed blog or another (such as this one). But in this instance a "real" publication put some time and journalistic "credibility" into this list, which places it in front of a wider audience than the typical blog poist (again, such as this one). So let's consider al...
Read more

Former Eclipse user re-evaluates Eclipse 3.3M5

-
Image
I've been using NetBeans for a while now, starting with version 4.2 in beta. One of NetBeans' key selling points (in my not-so-humble-opinion) is Java GUI building with Matisse . That feature continues to be quite powerful and unrivaled, especially for a free-as-in-beer IDE. I even wrote a lovely paean to the wonders of NetBeans and why I moved away away from Eclipse to NetBeans . Now, it looks like I may have to eat some of those tastefully written words. What you're looking at above is a complete Ruby on Rails project hosted and running within Eclipse 3.3 Milestone 5 on Windows XP. Milestone 5 was released this past Friday, February 9th. I installed it Saturday, and then went on a plugin hunt to fill out additional features and capabilities. Why did I decide to re-install Eclipse, especially a milestone? So that I could get a complete integrated development and test capability in one convenient package for Ruby on Rails. Like a lot of other folks I've been playing ...
Read more