MonoDevelop (also known as Xamarin Studio) is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools ...

for

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

, and

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...

. Its primary focus is development of projects that use

Mono Mono may refer to: Common meanings * Infectious mononucleosis, "the kissing disease" * Monaural, monophonic sound reproduction, often shortened to mono * Mono-, a numerical prefix representing anything single Music Performers * Mono (Japanes ...

and

.NET Framework The .NET Framework (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a proprietary software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It was the predominant implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) until bein ...

. MonoDevelop integrates features similar to those of

NetBeans NetBeans is an integrated development environment (IDE) for Java. NetBeans allows applications to be developed from a set of modular software components called ''modules''. NetBeans runs on Windows, macOS, Linux and Solaris. In addition to Java ...

and

Microsoft Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms such ...

, such as automatic code completion,

source control In software engineering, version control (also known as revision control, source control, or source code management) is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs, documents, large web sites, or other collections o ...

, a

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, ins ...

(GUI) and

Web designer Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; user interface design (UI design); authoring, including standardised code a ...

. MonoDevelop integrates a Gtk# GUI designer called

Stetic MonoDevelop (also known as Xamarin Studio) is an open-source integrated development environment for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Its primary focus is development of projects that use Mono and .NET Framework. MonoDevelop integrates features similar ...

. It supports Boo, C,

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

, C#, CIL, D, F#,

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

, Oxygene,

Vala Vala or VALA may refer to: Religion and mythology * Vala (Vedic), a demon or a stone cavern in the Hindu scriptures * Völva, also spelled Vala, a priestess in Norse mythology and Norse paganism Fiction * Vala (Middle-earth), an angelic being in ...

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

TypeScript TypeScript is a free and open source programming language developed and maintained by Microsoft. It is a strict syntactical superset of JavaScript and adds optional static typing to the language. It is designed for the development of large app ...

and Visual Basic.NET. MonoDevelop can be used on

and

. Officially supported Linux distributions include

CentOS CentOS (, from Community Enterprise Operating System; also known as CentOS Linux) is a Linux distribution that provides a free and open-source community-supported computing platform, functionally compatible with its upstream source, Red Hat En ...

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...

Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both side ...

openSUSE openSUSE () is a free and open source RPM-based Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project. The initial release of the community project was a beta version of SUSE Linux 10.0. Additionally the project creates a variety of tools, s ...

SUSE Linux Enterprise SUSE Linux Enterprise (often abbreviated to SLE) is a Linux-based operating system developed by SUSE. It is available in two editions, suffixed with Server (SLES) for servers and mainframes, and Desktop (SLED) for workstations and desktop compute ...

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a commercial open-source Linux distribution developed by Red Hat for the commercial market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-64, Power ISA, ARM64, and IBM Z and a desktop ...

and

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All ...

, with many other distributions providing their own unofficial builds of MonoDevelop in their repositories. macOS and Windows have been officially supported since version 2.2. MonoDevelop has included a C# compiler (an alternative to

MSBuild Microsoft Build Engine, or MSBuild, is a set of free and open-source build tools for managed code under the Common Language Infrastructure as well as native C and C++ code. It was first released in 2003 and was a part of .NET Framework. MSBuil ...

and CSC) since its earliest versions. It currently includes a compiler that supports C# 1.0, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0 and C# 6.0. A customized version of MonoDevelop formerly shipped with Windows and Mac versions of

Unity Unity may refer to: Buildings * Unity Building, Oregon, Illinois, US; a historic building * Unity Building (Chicago), Illinois, US; a skyscraper * Unity Buildings, Liverpool, UK; two buildings in England * Unity Chapel, Wyoming, Wisconsin, US; a ...

, the game engine by

Unity Technologies Unity Software Inc. ( doing business as Unity Technologies) is a video game software development company based in San Francisco. It was founded in Denmark in 2004 as Over the Edge Entertainment (OTEE) and changed its name in 2007. Unity Technol ...

. It enabled advanced C# scripting, which was used to compile cross-platform video games by the Unity compiler. It has since been replaced by Visual Studio Community, except on Linux versions.

History

In late 2003, a group of developers from the

community began migrating SharpDevelop, a successful .NET open source IDE from

Windows Forms Windows Forms (WinForms) is a free and open-source graphical (GUI) class library included as a part of Microsoft .NET, .NET Framework or Mono Framework, providing a platform to write client applications for desktop, laptop, and tablet PCs. Whi ...

on Windows to the

GNOME A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...

toolkit (Gtk#) on Linux. The fork was also to target the Mono framework instead of the Microsoft

implementation. Being an early fork of SharpDevelop, MonoDevelop architecturally differs from recent SharpDevelop releases. Over time, the MonoDevelop project was absorbed into the rest of the Mono project and as of 2016, is actively maintained by

Xamarin Xamarin is a Microsoft-owned San Francisco-based software company founded in May 2011 by the engineers that created Mono, Xamarin.Android (formerly Mono for Android) and Xamarin.iOS (formerly MonoTouch), which are cross-platform implementat ...

and the Mono community. Since Mono 1.0 Beta 2, MonoDevelop is bundled with Mono releases. Starting with version 4.x, Xamarin rebranded MonoDevelop as Xamarin Studio, but only for the Windows version of the IDE. As of 2016, Xamarin Studio also runs on macOS. In October of 2021 it was announced in the issue tracker that the project would be archived because it's no longer maintained

Features

MonoDevelop is an IDE for the .NET platform with features comparable to

. Highlights include: *Multi-platform IDE and user projects (Linux, Windows and macOS) *Multi-language (C#, F#, Visual Basic .NET, C/C++, Vala, JavaScript, TypeScript) *Project templates for C#, Visual Basic, Boo, Java (IKVM) and C/C++ *Code completion support for C#, code templates,

code folding Code or text folding, or less commonly holophrasting, is a feature of some graphical user interfaces that allows the user to selectively hide ("fold") or display ("unfold") parts of a document. This allows the user to manage large amounts of tex ...

*Customizable window layouts, user defined key bindings, external tools *Integrated Debugger for debugging Mono and native applications *Integrated Compiler (supports up to C# 6.0) *GTK# Visual Designer to graphically build GTK# user interfaces *ASP.NET web projects with code completion support and testing on XSP (Mono web server). *Source control, makefile integration, unit testing, packaging and deployment, localization

UI Builder

MonoDevelop has included a GTK# GUI designer called Stetic since version 0.1. to develop

GTK+ GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and prop ...

user interfaces in C#. Stetic is very similar to Glade Interface Designer but is integrated into MonoDevelop with features such as

drag and drop In computer graphical user interfaces, drag and drop is a pointing device gesture in which the user selects a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. In general, it can be used to ...

. It has been criticized for being more difficult to work with than the likes of Qt Designer and the Microsoft Visual Studio Windows Forms Editor when the programmer does not yet have a concrete layout in mind.

Xamarin Studio

offers a rebranded version of MonoDevelop 4.0 as Xamarin Studio which now uses platform-specific code in various places to enhance the look and feel. While Mono provides a package for Solaris 10 running on

SPARC SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Its design was strongly influenced by the experimental Berkeley RISC system develope ...

, MonoDevelop packages for

OpenSolaris OpenSolaris () is a discontinued open-source computer operating system based on Solaris and created by Sun Microsystems. It was also, perhaps confusingly, the name of a project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around t ...

are only provided by groups from the OpenSolaris community. MonoDevelop on

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

is likewise supported only by the FreeBSD community.

Visual Studio for Mac

Another rebranded version of MonoDevelop is Visual Studio for Mac. Visual Studio for Mac employs many of the same tools as its Windows counterpart: for example, the Roslyn

.NET Compiler Platform .NET Compiler Platform, also known by its codename Roslyn, is a set of open-source compilers and code analysis APIs for C# and Visual Basic (VB.NET) languages from Microsoft.

is used for refactoring and IntelliSense. Its project system and build engine use MSBuild; and its source editor supports TextMate bundles. It uses the same debugger engines for Xamarin and .NET Core apps, and the same designers for Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android.

References

External links

*
Xamarin Studio

Visual Studio for Mac
{{Microsoft FOSS .NET programming tools Free and open-source software Free integrated development environments Free software programmed in C Sharp Linux integrated development environments Microsoft free software Software that uses Mono (software) Software using the LGPL license 2003 software