How to port a Mono GTK# app to other platforms?

Question

I am working on a Mono GTK# desktop app written in C#. I have developed my app using the MonoDevelop IDE (v2.4.2) on a Mac (OS X v10.6.7). My app depends on the GTK# library (obviously) as well as the Mono.WebServer2 library for running a local ASP.NET server.

I have tested my app on my own Mac as well as other Macs. Everything is working out great. Now, I am interested in porting my app to other platforms (specifically, Windows 7 and Ubuntu v11.04). I have been playing around with the mkbundle command but I haven't had any luck in creating a working bundle for other platforms than Mac OS X.

Since I have tried a number of different solutions without success, I would like to hear from the Mono developers out there. What do you do to port your app to other platforms?

I have been developing C# using Visual Studio for a long time but I am new to the Mono development environment. Therefore, I would very much appreciate a detailed explanation.

Thank you very much!

Answer 1

It doesn't really sound like you're talking about porting, rather packaging. MonoDevelop's "Project/Create Package" function can create simple binary packages (zips etc) or source packages (source plus makefiles) but these are not the ideal form to distribute to most end-users. Some additional work is required to make a polished installer for each platform.

mkbundle bundles the Mono runtime into your app, therefore it creates binaries that are 100% platform-specific.

For Mac, the usual way to distribute an app is as an app bundle. MonoDevelop doesn't automate this for GTK# projects, but I explained how to do it on my blog.

For Ubuntu, you can distribute a zip of binaries and require that your users install Mono, GTK# and xsp. If you create a .deb package, you can embed these dependencies into the package manifest. MonoDevelop doesn't have any tools for creating deb/rpm linux packages, and I'm not familiar with the process myself.

For Windows, you can provide a zip of binaries and require that your users install .NET and GTK# for .NET. You could also create a msi installer and have it check for these prerequisites.

Answer 2

I just recently created deb package of my own .Net project written in MonoDevelop. From MonoDevelop I created a package with sources and makefiles (makefiles also generated by MonoDevelop) and then i used this guide>

http://www.webupd8.org/2010/01/how-to-create-deb-package-ubuntu-debian.html

to create deb package. Dependencies were mono-runtime and gtk-sharp2.

Answer 3

There are is also packaging projects available in Monodevelop. you can use them.

I'm doubtful that mkbundle work well other than Linux.

Another option that open your project on other plateform (you can use Monodevelop) and build the project and use some other app to build package.

Answer 4

It sounds like you have already solved the problem of packaging for Mac.

On Ubuntu, you would want to create a .deb package that contains your app and requires other packages as dependencies (Mono, Mono.WebServer2, GTK#, GTK+, etc). The following link should get you started on building Ubuntu packages:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment

For Windows, you probably already know how to build an installer if you have .NET experience. I would say that you would want to run your app on top of .NET instead of Mono. That is what the Mono team do themselves (for MonoDevelop as an example). Bring in the Mono specific bits like Mono.WebServer2 as part of your application.

Your biggest issue here will be that GTK# requires the GTK+ C libraries to be installed. Probably the easiest thing is to detect if GTK# is installed as part of the installer and ask your users to install GTK# if they need it. You are going to have to do the same detection for the .NET version you require anyway. You can get GTK# for Windows here.

I do not have great instructions for doing this but both the Banshee and MonoDevelop projects do it well. I would take a look at those projects as they will show you exactly what needs to be done.

https://github.com/mono/monodevelop

http://git.gnome.org/browse/banshee

EDIT:

I just recently realized that the code for the GTK# installer is on GitHub here.