MonoDevelop (also known as Xamarin Studio) is a discontinued

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...

for

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

, and

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. Its primary focus is development of projects that use Mono and .NET Framework. MonoDevelop integrates features similar to those of

NetBeans NetBeans is an integrated development environment (IDE) for Java (programming language), Java. NetBeans allows applications to be developed from a set of modular software components called ''modules''. NetBeans runs on Microsoft Windows, Windows, ...

and Microsoft

Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed by Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including web site, websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development ...

, such as automatic code completion,

source control Version control (also known as revision control, source control, and source code management) is the software engineering practice of controlling, organizing, and tracking different versions in history of computer files; primarily source code ...

, a

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

(GUI), and

Web designer Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; user interface design (UI design); authoring, including standardised code an ...

. MonoDevelop integrates a Gtk# GUI designer called Stetic. It supports Boo, C, C++, C#, CIL, D, F#,

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

, Oxygene, Vala,

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

TypeScript TypeScript (abbreviated as TS) is a high-level programming language that adds static typing with optional type annotations to JavaScript. It is designed for developing large applications and transpiles to JavaScript. It is developed by Micr ...

, and

Visual Basic.NET Visual Basic (VB), originally called Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET), is a multi-paradigm, object-oriented programming language developed by Microsoft and implemented on .NET, Mono, and the .NET Framework. Microsoft launched VB.NET in 2002 as the ...

. Although there is no word from the developers that it has been discontinued, nonetheless, it hasn't been updated in 4 years and is no longer installable on major operating systems, such as

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

22.04 and above. MonoDevelop can be used on

, and

. Officially supported Linux distributions include

CentOS CentOS (, from Community Enterprise Operating System; also known as CentOS Linux) is a discontinued Linux distribution that provided a free and open-source community-supported computing platform, functionally compatible with its upstream (softw ...

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides ...

openSUSE openSUSE () is a free and open-source software, free and open-source Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project. It is offered in two main variations: ''Tumbleweed'', an upstream rolling release distribution, and ''Leap'', a stable r ...

, SUSE Linux Enterprise,

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a commercial Linux distribution developed by Red Hat. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-64, Power ISA, ARM64, and IBM Z and a desktop version for x86-64. Fedora Linux and ...

, and

, with many other distributions providing their own unofficial builds of MonoDevelop in their repositories. macOS and Windows have been officially supported since version 2.2. MonoDevelop has included a C# compiler (an alternative to MSBuild and CSC) since its earliest versions. It currently includes a compiler that supports C# 1.0, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, and C# 6.0. A customized version of MonoDevelop formerly shipped with Windows and Mac versions of Unity, the game engine by

Unity Technologies Unity Software Inc. (doing business as Unity Technologies) is an American video game software development company based in San Francisco. It was founded in Denmark in 2004 as Over the Edge Entertainment and changed its name in 2007. Unity Techn ...

. It enabled advanced C# scripting, which was used to compile cross-platform video games by the Unity compiler. It has since been replaced by Visual Studio Community, except on Linux versions.

History

In late 2003, a group of developers from the Mono community began migrating SharpDevelop, a successful .NET open source IDE from

Windows Forms Windows Forms, also known as WinForms, is a free, open-source graphical user interface (GUI) class library for building Windows desktop applications, included as a part of Microsoft .NET, .NET Framework or Mono, providing a platform to write c ...

on Windows to the

GNOME A gnome () is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depict ...

toolkit (Gtk#) on Linux. The fork was also to target the Mono framework instead of the Microsoft .NET Framework implementation. Being an early fork of SharpDevelop, MonoDevelop architecturally differs from recent SharpDevelop releases. Over time, the MonoDevelop project was absorbed into the rest of the Mono project and as of 2016, is actively maintained by

Xamarin Xamarin is a Microsoft-owned San Francisco-based software company founded in May 2011 by the engineers that created Mono (software), Mono, Mono (software)#Xamarin.Android, Xamarin.Android (formerly Mono for Android) and Mono (software)#Xamarin.i ...

and the Mono community. Since Mono 1.0 Beta 2, MonoDevelop is bundled with Mono releases. Starting with version 4.x, Xamarin rebranded MonoDevelop as Xamarin Studio, but only for the Windows version of the IDE. As of 2016, Xamarin Studio also runs on macOS. In October 2021, it was announced in the issue tracker that the project would be archived because it's no longer maintained.

Features

MonoDevelop is an IDE for the .NET platform with features comparable to

Microsoft Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed by Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms ...

. Highlights include: *Multi-platform IDE and user projects (Linux, Windows and macOS) *Multi-language (C#, F#, Visual Basic .NET, C/C++, Vala, JavaScript, TypeScript) *Project templates for C#, Visual Basic, Boo, Java (IKVM) and C/C++ *Code completion support for C#, code templates,

code folding Code or text folding, or less commonly holophrasting, is a feature of some graphical user interfaces that allows the user to selectively hide ("fold") or display ("unfold") parts of a document. This allows the user to manage large amounts of text ...

*Customizable window layouts, user defined key bindings, external tools *Integrated Debugger for debugging Mono and native applications *Integrated Compiler (supports up to C# 6.0) *GTK# Visual Designer to graphically build GTK# user interfaces *ASP.NET web projects with code completion support and testing on XSP (Mono web server). *Source control, makefile integration, unit testing, packaging and deployment, localization

UI Builder

MonoDevelop has included a GTK# GUI designer called Stetic since version 0.1. to develop

GTK+ GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free software cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and proprietary s ...

user interfaces in C#. Stetic is very similar to Glade Interface Designer but is integrated into MonoDevelop with features such as

drag and drop In computer graphical user interfaces, drag and drop is a pointing device gesture in which the user (computing), user selects a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. In general, i ...

. It has been criticized for being more difficult to work with than the likes of

Qt Designer Qt Creator is a cross-platform C++, JavaScript, Python and QML integrated development environment (IDE) which simplifies GUI application development. It is part of the SDK for the Qt GUI application development framework and uses the Qt ...

and the Microsoft Visual Studio Windows Forms Editor when the programmer does not yet have a concrete layout in mind.

Xamarin Studio

offers a rebranded version of MonoDevelop 4.0 as Xamarin Studio which now uses platform-specific code in various places to enhance the look and feel. While Mono provides a package for

Solaris Solaris is the Latin word for sun. It may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film * ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem ** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg ** ''Sol ...

10 running on SPARC, MonoDevelop packages for

OpenSolaris OpenSolaris () is a discontinued open-source computer operating system for SPARC and x86 based systems, created by Sun Microsystems and based on Solaris. Its development began in the mid 2000s and ended in 2010. OpenSolaris was developed as ...

are only provided by groups from the OpenSolaris community. MonoDevelop on

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

is likewise supported only by the FreeBSD community.

Visual Studio for Mac

Another rebranded version of MonoDevelop is Visual Studio for Mac. Visual Studio for Mac employs many of the same tools as its Windows counterpart: for example, the Roslyn .NET Compiler Platform is used for refactoring and

IntelliSense Code completion is an autocompletion feature in many integrated development environments (IDEs) that speeds up the process of coding applications by fixing common mistakes and suggesting lines of code. This usually happens through popups while typ ...

. Its project system and build engine use MSBuild; and its source editor supports TextMate bundles. It uses the same debugger engines for Xamarin and .NET Core apps, and the same designers for Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android. On August 30, 2023, Microsoft announced that Visual Studio for Mac is in the process of discontinuation, with 17.6 being the last version supported until August 31, 2024.

References

External links

*
Xamarin StudioVisual Studio for Mac
{{Microsoft FOSS .NET programming tools discontinued Microsoft development tools discontinued Microsoft software Free and open-source software Free integrated development environments Free software programmed in C Sharp Linux integrated development environments Microsoft free software Software that uses Mono (software) Software using the GNU Lesser General Public License 2003 software

History

Features

UI Builder

Xamarin Studio

Visual Studio for Mac

See also

References

External links