December 29th, 2008

Debugging C# in Monodevelop on Ubuntu - 0

As soon as I heard that the MonoDevelop Subversion code included support for actually debugging my C# code I tried installing it to give it a go. Optimistically I kept notes, figuring that it would be useful to write a post about the install process later. As my notes started to turn into a book, and the arrows back and forth and crossed out scribbles increased I gave up on writing the ultimate “ten step guide to installing Monodevelop on Ubuntu”.

When I finally had MonoDevelop compiled and installed — the promised debugging didn’t actually work. Bummer. I gave up, and went back to coding the old way (with ticker tape). This morning I checked out the latest SVN, installed it and ran it, just for laughs.

And behold as shown below — debugging actually worked. I can step and trace through the code, and set watches making MonoDevelop suddenly that much more useful to me.

The best thing? The Mono C# libraries are not black boxes but open source — you can step and trace directly into the Mono libraries themselves and find out what Mono is doing as you call library functions.

The problem with installing MonoDevelop 2.0alpha 2 is that the guides online don’t actually produce a working MonoDevelop installation. If you run MonoDevelop under Ubuntu like I do, the number of dependencies and sub-dependencies you need to resolve is large and I ended up compiling, re-compiling and changing version numbers of modules multiple times to find combinations that worked. In addition I had to change, add and resolve many missing library conflicts within Ubuntu as well.

Concluding: Yes, it is possible. Just do not expect a quick and easy install of MonoDevelop 2.0 alpha 2 on your Ubuntu installation.

This is fun only if you have plenty of spare time.

Some hints — this does not produce a working Mono Develop installation

Remove Mono 1.9, MonoDevelop 1.0, and any and all other mono related things from your ubuntu installation before attempting to compile MonoDevelop 2.0 Alpha 2 to avoid conflicts down the road.
Install mono 2.3, the debugger and mono develop from SVN, not from the packages provided on the website (they do not work)
$ svn co svn://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk/mono
$ svn co svn://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk/mcs
$ svn co svn://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk/debugger
$ svn co svn://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk/mono-addins
$ svn co svn://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk/olive
$ svn co svn://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk/monodevelop
I installed gtk-sharp-2.12.5, gnome-sharp-2.20.0 and libglade-2.0.1 as support libraries
Compile and install monodevelop last of all