mono/README

This is Mono.

1. Installation
2. Using Mono
3. Directory Roadmap

1. Compilation and Installation
===============================

   a. Build Requirements
   ---------------------

	To build Mono, you will need the following components:

		* pkg-config

		  Available from: http://www.freedesktop.org/Software/pkgconfig

		* glib 2.0

		  Available from: http://www.gtk.org/

	Optional dependencies:

	 	* ICU library

		  http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/index.html

		  You will need this one to get complete support for the international
		  features of the .NET Framework.

		* Cairo and libgdiplus

		  If you want to get support for System.Drawing, you will need to get
		  both Libgdiplus and Cairo.

    b. Building the Software
    ------------------------
  	
	If you obtained this package as an officially released tarball,
	this is very simple, use configure and make:

		./configure --prefix=/usr/local
		make
		make install

	Mono supports a JIT engine on x86, SPARC and PowerPC systems.
	The various commands that ship with Mono default to the JIT engine
	on x86 and SPARC, to turn it on for PPC systems, use the --with-jit=yes 
	command line option to configure.

	MacOS X Users: you will need to download the latest Boehm GC
	Alpha release for garbage collection to work properly.

	If you obtained this as a snapshot, you will need an existing
	Mono installation.  To upgrade your installation, unpack both
	mono and mcs:

		tar xzf mcs-XXXX.tar.gz
		tar xzf mono-XXXX.tar.gz
		mv mono-XXX mono
		mv mcs-XXX mcs
		cd mono
		./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local
		make bootstrap 

    c. Building the software from CVS
    ---------------------------------

	If you are building the software from CVS, make sure that you
	have up-to-date mcs and mono sources:

		cvs co mono mcs

	Then, go into the mono directory, and configure:

		cd mono
		./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local

	Depending on whether you have an existing Mono installation or
	not, you can try the following:

	i.   If you have an existing Mono installation
	     -----------------------------------------

	First verify that you have a working installation:

		echo 'class X { static void Main () { System.Console.Write("OK");}}' > x.cs

	Compile:

		mcs x.cs

	And run:

		mono x.exe

	If you get the output `OK' and no errors, and you have mono
	version 0.31 or later, continue.  Otherwise, you can try option
	(ii) below.

	You are ready to start your CVS upgrade.  Compile with

		make bootstrap

	This will automatically go into the mcs/ tree and build the
	binaries there, and copy them into the appropriate
	sub-directories of  mono/runtime/.

	Now, go to step (iii) below.

	ii.  If you don't have a working Mono installation
	     ---------------------------------------------

	If you don't have a working Mono installation, an obvious choice
	is to install the latest released packages of 'mono' for your
	distribution and go back to step (i).

	You can also try a slightly more risky approach that should work
	almost all the time.  

	This works by first getting the latest version of the 'monolite'
	distribution, which contains just enough to run the 'mcs'
	compiler.  You do this by

		make get-monolite-latest

	This should place a monolite-latest.tar.gz in the parent
	directory of the 'mono' source tree.  You can then run:

		make monolite-bootstrap

	This will automatically gunzip and untar the tarball, place the
	files appropriately, and then complete the bootstrap.

	iii. Testing and Installation
	     ------------------------

	You can run the mono and mcs testsuites with the command:

		make -k bootstrap-check

	Expect to find several testsuite failures, especially in the
	mcs/ tree.  As a sanity check, you can compare the failures you
	got with

		http://go-mono.com/tests/displayTestResults.php

	You can now install it:

		make install

	Failure to follow these steps will result in a broken installation. 

	iv.  Other useful "bootstrap"-like facilities
	     ----------------------------------------

	If you have a CVS snapshot that you keep updating periodically,
	and/or do your development in, you may try using a couple of
	specialty make targets that may be slightly faster than a
	"make bootstrap".

	You can try a two-stage bootstrap with:

		make faststrap

	This assumes that you have already run a "make bootstrap" on the
	tree before.

	If you want to avoid waiting even for that, you can try the
	riskier one-stage build:

		make fasterstrap

	This should be attempted only if you're sure that the sources of
	the mcs compiler itself and the sources of the libraries used by
	it have not been changed.

2. Using Mono
=============

	Once you have installed the software, you can run a few programs:

	* runtime engine

		mono program.exe
	  or
		mint program.exe

	* C# compiler

		mcs program.cs

	* CIL Disassembler

		monodis program.exe

	See the man pages for mono(1), mint(1), monodis(1) and mcs(2)
	for further details.

3. Directory Roadmap
====================

	doc/
		Contains the web site contents.

	docs/
		Technical documents about the Mono runtime.

	data/
		Configuration files installed as part of the Mono runtime.

	mono/
		The core of the Mono Runtime.

		metadata/
			The object system and metadata reader.

		jit/
			The Just in Time Compiler.

		dis/
			CIL executable Disassembler

		cli/
			Common code for the JIT and the interpreter.

		io-layer/
			The I/O layer and system abstraction for 
			emulating the .NET IO model.

		cil/
			Common Intermediate Representation, XML
			definition of the CIL bytecodes.

		interp/
			Interpreter for CLI executables.

		arch/
			Architecture specific portions.

	man/

		Manual pages for the various Mono commands and programs.

	scripts/

		Scripts used to invoke Mono and the corresponding program.

	runtime/

		A directory holding a pre-compiled version of the Mono
		runtime.