MONO - an open source .NET development framework.

Mono is a cross platform, open source .NET development framework.

the Mono open source project has an active and enthusiastic contributing community and is positioned to become the leading choice for development of Linux applications.


The Mono Project is an open development initiative sponsored by Novell to develop an open source, UNIX version of the Microsoft .NET development platform. Its objective is to enable UNIX developers to build and deploy cross-platform .NET Applications. The project implements various technologies developed by Microsoft that have now been submitted to the ECMA for standardization.

Mono contains a number of components useful for building new software:

A Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) virtual machine that contains a class loader, Just-in-time compiler, and a garbage collecting runtime.
A class library that can work with any language which works on the CLR. Both .NET compatible class libraries as well as Mono-provided class libraries are included.
A compiler for the C# language. In the future we might work on other compilers that target the Common Language Runtime.

Mono is used in many commercial and open source applications and is used by many companies.

Why is Novell working on .NET?

There are two reasons:

Increase developer productivity.
Assist Windows .NET developers to deploy their applications on Linux.
Novell is interested in providing the best tools for programmers to develop applications for Free Operating Systems. Since the product launch many applications have been written specifically for Mono or ported from Windows.

Today we maintain the core VM, the Just-in-Time compiler, the core class libraries, Gtk# and the libraries to provide compatibility with Microsoft.NET (ADO.NET, ASP.NET and Windows.Forms).

** MONODevelop **

MonoDevelop is a free GNOME IDE primarily designed for C# and other .NET languages. The main features of MonoDevelop are:

Code Completion. MonoDevelop's intelligent code completion attempts to complete type, method and field names as you're typing. The IDE will automatically get the class information from your source code files and from the libraries referenced in your project.
Class Management. MonoDevelop has a class viewer which allows you to list the classes in your project, their methods, and properties. Your namespaces are also kept track of to keep the classes separated.
Built-in Help. The .NET documentation and the Gtk# documentation are built into MonoDevelop for easy access.
Project Support. MonoDevelop comes with built in projects that help get you started with your console, Gnome# or Gtk# application.

Add-ins : MonoDevelop has a powerful add-in engine, which together with a modular API and a complete set of extension points, provides a seamless platform upon which to build your own development tools. MonoDevelop also provides an Add-in Manager you can use to install add-ins from online repositories.


ASP.NET hosting with Apache
The mod_mono Apache module is used to run ASP.NET applications within the Apache (http://httpd.apache.org) web server.

The mod_mono module runs within an Apache process and passes all the requests to ASP.NET applications to an external Mono process that actually hosts your ASP.NET applications. The external ASP.NET host is called "mod-mono-server" and is part of the XSP module.

To use this, you must download and install the mod_mono and xsp components of Mono. mod_mono contains the actual Apache module, and xsp contains the actual ASP.NET hosting engine, both are available from our download page.

*** IKVM.NET ***

IKVM.NET is an implementation of Java for Mono and the Microsoft .NET Framework. IKVM is free software, distributed under a permissive free software license.
IKVM includes the following components:
A Java Virtual Machine implemented in .NET. A .NET implementation of the Java class libraries. Tools that enable Java and .NET interoperability. With IKVM, you can run compiled Java code (byte code) directly on Microsoft .NET or Mono. The byte code is converted on the fly to CIL and executed.