Mono: A Developer's Notebook

Chapter 8. Cutting Edge Mono

This chapter is all about the really cool things you can do with Mono: how to create finished source code distributions, how to use the latest development features, and how to integrate Mono with other computing environments.

If you intend to use Mono seriously, you’ll need to know how to give a professional finish to your application code. The labs on cross-platform compatibility and creating source code distributions with autoconf and automake programs will help. If you’re following Mono’s development, or plan to get involved, you’ll find the labs on using CVS Mono and new features like generics useful. Lastly, you’ll likely want to integrate Mono into the rest of your computing world. This chapter covers how to use BASIC in Mono, and how to get Java and Mono interoperating smoothly.

Maintain Your Sources with the Autotools

If you’ve ever downloaded source code to an open source project, it’s likely you’ve used GNU autoconf and automake. These tools are responsible for generating the familiar configure script, run before building the software to gather information about your system, and the makefiles that control the software build. These “autotools” have been developed over time to enable trouble-free building of programs on practically any Unix-like system. This includes of course, Mac OS X and Windows-Cygwin (see Section 1.4) as well as Linux.

Note

Love `em or hate `em, GNU autoconf and automake bring predictability and portability to your projects ...