What's the point of Mono on Windows

Question

This may be a dumb question...but I was just looking into the Mono project and they have a section about installing Mono on Windows. But, since Windows obviously already has the .NET runtime can anyone tell me what exactly is the point of having Mono for Windows? Does it help with cross platform development or something?

Solution 1

Because Mono Doesn't implement .Net 100% the same as the MS .Net Framework, it's good that you can test out on Mono without having to run on Linux. Also Mono has bindings to make forms with GTK which MS doesn't support.

Solution 2

There are a couple of features Mono has that .NET doesn't.

Mono is highly modular. You can break it apart in tiny little pieces and only deploy exactly those parts that you need. Don't want System.Xml? Fine, it's gone.

Mono is embeddable. You can host it inside your C/C++ application, to allow users to script it from a safe managed sandboxed environment. The most famous example of this is mod_mono, which hosts Mono inside the Apache webserver, and is how ASP.NET is implemented in Mono, for example. This feature goes great together with the modularization mentioned above.

This has already been mentioned: static linking. Also goes great together with modularization.

Compiler as a Service is another one. Anders Hejlsberg has been talking about it for a long time, and maybe, just maybe it is going to be ready for C# 5.0. Well, Mono already has it, and actually had it for years.

Miguel de Icaza, Mono's Lead Developer also has an initiative that he calls "Embrace and Extend.NET", which extends the CLI in ways not (currently) possible with other CLI implementations (including .NET). So far, Embrace and Extend.NET has three features.

Mono.Simd, which gives safe and controlled access to the SIMD instructions of the underlying CPU (e.g. SSE on Intel or AltiVec on PowerPC). Used for Games and Graphics.

64 Bit array indices, which are allowed by the ECMA specification, but Mono is the only VM that actually provides them. Used in supercomputing.

And most recently, continuations. This is actually the first time that Mono strays outside the realm of the specification: long array indices are perfectly valid as per the spec, and Mono.Simd also works on every CLI compliant implementation (albeit very S-L-O-W), but Mono.Tasklet needs special support from the VM that is not part of either CLI or .NET. This is used for game logic and e.g. in Second Life.

Solution 3

Mono does some things the .Net doesn't.

For example, mono supports static linking so you can build, compile, and distribute your app without requiring a separate run-time installer. If you built an app to rely on mono to be cross-platform, there are some differences from .Net and so sticking with mono on Windows is a greater guarantee of compatibility.

.Net does some things that mono doesn't.

There are a few places in the BCL that are not yet ported for mono, such as WPF and Winforms, among others.

If you want an app that will also work on mac/linux you probably want to develop for mono first, even if you're doing the most of the work on windows.

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Note: all of this pre-dates .Net Core/Standard.

Solution 4

From Mono's technical FAQ:

Why support Windows, when you can run the real thing?

There are various reasons:

Supporting Windows helps us identify the portable portions of Mono from the non-portable versions of it, helping Mono become more portable in the future.

It assists us since we can isolate problems in Mono by partitioning the problem (is it a runtime issue, or an OS issue?).

About half the contributors to Mono are Windows developers. They have many different reasons for contributing to the effort, and we find it very important to let those developers run the runtime on Windows without forcing them to use a new operating system.

Mono does not heavily modify the windows registry, update system DLLs, install DLLs to the Windows/System32 path.

It helps Windows-based developers to test their code under Mono before they deploy into Linux.

Mono and applications that embed Mono can be deployed without an installer (you can "xcopy" deploy your application and the required Mono files without installing the .NET runtime).

Solution 5

If you want to develop a cross-platform application in C#, then using Microsoft's implementation is not the smartest thing, as there is no fully compatible alternative for other platforms.

So using Mono on Windows to develop applications ensures that you'll have little trouble porting it to other OS (provided you avoid other pits such as P/Invoke).

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Comments

[Benjamin Autin]

Static linking is one of the biggest things I've heard Mono on Windows is being used for.

[nullException]

i hope that Miguel gets to the point to embrace and extend; but so far he's just following MS's lead. it hurts to see a great developer subjugated that way

[jpobst]

While MS.Net does not come with support for Gtk#, the Mono project publishes an installer for Windows that allows Gtk# applications to run on MS.Net without Mono.

[Phrygian Moon]

@Javier read this post by Miguel tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/May-06.html mono is definitely not just following ms.

[Martin Salias]

What is a "natural environment"? Windows might be your natural environment. I have several environment, all of them pretty artificial, but fine for me. :)

[Martin Salias]

Mono also have stuff .NET does not, like the already mentioned CsharpRepl (an interpreter-like command window for C# which is really cool), the TextTemplating engine and Mono.Cecil which is way better than Reflection - See this nice blog post: amazedsaint.blogspot.com/2010/10/monocsharp-monocecil-and.ht‌​ml

[Rolf]

It's weird nobody mentioned mono being open source (it is, right?). I'm sure it matters for some.