Getting Started with Mono on Mac OS X

Mono is an amazing technology which promises to allow .NET System.Windows.Forms applications to run unchanged on all supported version of Windows and also Mac OS X and Linux. I’ve been a Windows developer for years and am intrigued by the prospect of writing real-world applications that will run equally well on all of these platforms.

I’m going to start by migrating a large retail application written in C# to Mac OS X. I’m going to do my best to maintain the same code base for all platforms. If the migration from Windows to Mac is successful, then I’ll move on to Linux.

Today I was able to get a hello world style WinForms application running on OS X (originally complied on Windows XP).

I started by downloading and installing the latest version of Mono from the following URL:

http://www.mono-project.com/Downloads

Next I used the following getting started guide to get my application running.

http://oepapel.blogspot.com/2005/04/windowsforms-and-mac-osx.html

for me the macpack program was a real lifesaver in getting my application up and running. More information on this utility can be found at the following URL:

http://www.joeysmith.com/cgi-bin/man/man2html?macpack+1

I can’t wait to see what tomorrow has in store.

-d