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 2.4

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

	Optional dependencies:

		* libgdiplus

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

    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, S/390, AMD64 and PowerPC systems.

	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

    c. Building the software from SVN
    ---------------------------------

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

		svn co svn+ssh://[email protected]/source/trunk/mono
		svn co svn+ssh://[email protected]/source/trunk/mcs

	Then, go into the mono directory, and configure:

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

	This will automatically go into the mcs/ tree and build the
	binaries there.

	This assumes that you have a working mono installation, and that
	there's a C# compiler named 'mcs', and a corresponding IL
	runtime called 'mono'.  You can use two make variables
	EXTERNAL_MCS and EXTERNAL_RUNTIME to override these.  e.g., you
	can say

	  make EXTERNAL_MCS=/foo/bar/mcs EXTERNAL_RUNTIME=/somewhere/else/mono
	
	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 try from the beginning.

	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 with:

		make get-monolite-latest

	This will download and automatically gunzip and untar the
	tarball, and place the files appropriately so that you can then
	just run:

		make

	To ensure that you're using the 'monolite' distribution, you can
	also try passing EXTERNAL_MCS=false on the make command-line.

	Testing and Installation
	 ------------------------

	You can run (part of) the mono and mcs testsuites with the command:

		make check

	All tests should pass.  

	If you want more extensive tests, including those that test the
	class libraries, you need to re-run 'configure' with the
	'--enable-nunit-tests' flag, and try

		make -k check

	Expect to find a few testsuite failures.  As a sanity check, you
	can compare the failures you got with

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

	You can now install mono with:

		make install

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

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 that contains the Makefiles that link the
		mono/ and mcs/ build systems.