Unit testing with NUnit is deeply integrated into Mono. The Mono code itself uses NUnit extensively to test its own functionality. In this post we look at how you can enable unit testing for your own code under MonoDevelop. In an earlier post I looked at how to install NUnit for Visual Studio 2008 Express, in this post we do the same for MonoDevelop.

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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

Mono JIT compiler version 2.3 (/trunk/mono r121276 Thu Dec 11 13:04:53 CST 2008)
Copyright (C) 2002-2008 Novell, Inc and Contributors. www.mono-project.com