Good IDE for Mono on Windows

c# windows mono monodevelop sharpdevelop
Paya picture Paya · Mar 28, 2010 · Viewed 12.4k times · Source

I would like to develop Mono application for Win/Linux/Mac in C# on Windows. Is there any really good (Visual Studio comparable) IDE for that? The best would be if I could manage Visual C# Express to compile solutions using the Mono compiler.

I've found a #develop IDE, which looks very cool and has many features that Express edition of the Visual Studio hasn't (like plugins for TortoiseSVN, NUnit, etc). Hovewer the 3.* versions dropped support for Mono, so you are no longer able to compile solutions using the Mono compiler.

There is also a MonoDevelop. I've tried it and it sucks. Not comparable to Visual Studio at all. No WinForms designer, + tons of other missing features. I would just like if they would drop the development of MonoDevelop and build a plugin for #develop instead.

Is there any other good enough IDE, or is it possible to make the Visual C# Express or #develop compile the solutions with Mono compiler?

EDIT: Delphi Prism looks cool, but it isn't C#.

Answer

Reed Copsey picture Reed Copsey · Mar 28, 2010

You can always develop your applications using Visual Studio Express Edition (since you don't want to pay for the Mono Tools). Monodevelop will support compilation of Visual Studio solutions now, so just develop in VS, and recompile occasionally in Monodevelop to guarantee support.

Since Mono now supports Windows Forms, you can develop a Windows Forms application entirely in Visual Studio, and just deploy it using Mono. Since C# compiles to IL, it doesn't matter which IDE you use to develop - you can still run it on Mono.

Related questions

Deploy GTK Sharp applications to Windows without installing GTK#

I am developing a GTK# mono application under openSuse, but I am interested in deploying it for all three platforms (Windows 7, Snow Leopard and as many Linux distributions as I can test on). Deploying on Linux is not a problem …

Read More
How to delete a file after checking whether it exists

How can I delete a file in C# e.g. C:\test.txt, although apply the same kind of method like in batch files e.g. if exist "C:\test.txt" delete "C:\test.txt" else return nothing (ignore)

Read More
How to get a path to the desktop for current user in C#?

How do I get a path to the desktop for current user in C#? The only thing I could find was the VB.NET-only class SpecialDirectories, which has this property: My.Computer.FileSystem.SpecialDirectories.Desktop How can I do this …

Read More