The Bonobo Journal

MonoDevelop 1.0 has finally been release on March 14, 2008. I figured that I’ll install the MonoDevelop since I like an IDE that will do stuff like autocomplete and because Yast should also include all of the dependent components.

I have heard of numerous problems with installing MonoDevelop on linux distros because a package were not available. I was expecting Novell to make certain that MonoDevelop would install smoothly on Suse 10.3. While installation were far easier on Suse than on other distros, it still was not trouble-free.

The following are instructions on how to install MonoDevelop 1.0 on Suse 10.3. Note that I was installing on a virtual machine, but installation for a real machine should be exactly the same.

Adding the Mono Repository

The first step is to add the Mono distro to Yast, so that the package will appear in the package selector.

1. In Suse 10.3, launch Yast. You will be prompted to enter the root password. Enter the password and press OK.
2. Click on Software Repositories in Yast. Click on the Add button. Select the option “Specify URL” and press Next. Enter the name of the repository of “Mono Repository” and the URL to “http://www.go-mono.com/download-stable/suse-103-i586″ and the press Next.
3. Press Finish. You will be prompted to sign with untrusted public key. Press Trust and Import key. The Software Repository window will close.

Installing MonoDevelop

Now that the Mono repository has been added to Yast, we can install the MonoDevelop package. This is where the troubles begin. Gnome and Banshee both use an older version of Mono library that was installed by default by Suse. When you attempt to install a new version of Mono, Yast doesn’t like it because you are changing the packages that Gnome and Banshee depend on. The trick is to tell Yast to ignore the dependencies since the library should be backwards compatible (”should” but who knows).

1. Click on the Software Management in Yast. This brings up package selector.
2. Type “monodevelop” in the search. This brings up MonoDevelop on the left pane.
3. Select Monodevelop and press Install. This move MonoDevelop to the right pane.
4. Press the Accept button. A change summary window will displaying dependencies.
5. Press the Confirm button. A resolve window appears, it will warned you that mono-nunit cannot be installed due to missing dependencies. The problem is that mono-nunit wants a later version of mono-core than the one installed by default by Suse 10.3.
6. Click on “Install mono-core although it would change the vendor” and press confirm. You are changing vendors because you are now getting it from the go-mono.com instead of Novell. Now another resolve window pops up. This time it warns that gnome_multimedia, banshee-engine-gst, banshee, banshee-plugins-default, and banshee-plugins-DAAP has missing dependencies. This is because Banshee and gnome-multimedia uses mono-core and you are installing a new version of mono-core.
7. Select “Ignore this requirement just here” for each conflict and press Confirm. Selecting the other option and you may find Banshee deleted!

Unfortunately, we are not home free, when I launch MonoDevelop and create a new project, I get the following error:

Exception occurred: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.

System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. —> System.TypeInitializationException: An exception was thrown by the type initializer for MonoDevelop.SourceEditor.Gui.SourceEditorDisplayBinding —> System.DllNotFoundException: libgtksourceview-1.0.so.0
at (wrapper managed-to-native) GtkSourceView.SourceTagTable:gtk_source_tag_table_get_type ()
at GtkSourceView.SourceTagTable.get_GType () [0x00000]
at GtkSharp.GtksourceviewSharp.ObjectManager.Initialize () [0x00000]
at GtkSourceView.GtkSourceViewManager.Init () [0x00000]
at MonoDevelop.SourceEditor.Gui.SourceEditorDisplayBinding..cctor () [0x00000] — End of inner exception stack trace —

at (wrapper managed-to-native) System.Reflection.MonoCMethod:InternalInvoke (object,object[])
at System.Reflection.MonoCMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) [0x00000] — End of inner exception stack trace —

at System.Reflection.MonoCMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) [0x00000]
at System.Reflection.MonoCMethod.Invoke (BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) [0x00000]
at System.Reflection.ConstructorInfo.Invoke (System.Object[] parameters) [0x00000]
at System.Activator.CreateInstance (System.Type type, Boolean nonPublic) [0x00000]
at System.Activator.CreateInstance (System.Type type) [0x00000]
at Mono.Addins.TypeExtensionNode.CreateInstance () [0x00000]
at Mono.Addins.InstanceExtensionNode.GetInstance () [0x00000]
at MonoDevelop.Ide.Codons.DisplayBindingCodon.get_DisplayBinding () [0x00000]
at MonoDevelop.Ide.Gui.DisplayBindingService.GetCodonPerFileName (System.String filename) [0x00000]
at MonoDevelop.Ide.Gui.DisplayBindingService.GetBindingPerFileName (System.String filename) [0x00000]
at MonoDevelop.Ide.Gui.Workbench.RealOpenFile (System.Object openFileInfo) [0x00000]
at MonoDevelop.Ide.Gui.Workbench.OpenDocument (System.String fileName, Int32 line, Int32 column, Boolean bringToFront, System.String encoding, IDisplayBinding binding) [0x00000]
at MonoDevelop.Ide.Gui.Workbench.OpenDocument (System.String fileName, Int32 line, Int32 column, Boolean bringToFront) [0x00000]
at MonoDevelop.Ide.Gui.Workbench.OpenDocument (System.String fileName, Boolean bringToFront) [0x00000]
at MonoDevelop.Ide.Gui.Workbench.OpenDocument (System.String fileName) [0x00000]
at MonoDevelop.Ide.Templates.OpenFileAction.Run (MonoDevelop.Projects.ProjectCreateInformation projectCreateInformation) [0x00000]
at MonoDevelop.Ide.Templates.ProjectTemplate.OpenCreatedCombine () [0x00000]
at MonoDevelop.Ide.Gui.Dialogs.NewProjectDialog.OpenEvent (System.Object sender, System.EventArgs e) [0x00000]
at GLib.Signal.voidObjectCallback (IntPtr handle, IntPtr gch) [0x00000]

Fixing the dependency issue

A quick search through the google reveal this bug. What seemed to be happening is that an exception is thrown when MonoDevelop attempts to display your code using gtksourceview. Apparently, gtksourceview-2.0.0-5 can not be use in place of gtksourceview18-1.8.5-16. To fix this, do the following:

1. Make sure you have the Suse Disc in the drive, since gtksourceview18 is on the disc. Launch Yast.
2. Click on Software Management. This launches the Package Selector.
3. Type in gtksourceview18.
4. Select gtksourceview18 and press Install, and then accept.
5. Click confirm on Change summary window.
6. When prompted to install or remove more packages, press No.

With gtksourceview18 installed, Monodevelop seems to work now. Banshee still seems to work just fine. Hopefully, the next version of MonoDevelop will be less painful to install.

Problems with Help

When I select Help, I get the following error: “The help window can’t be shown. Monodoc v1.2.3 is not installed or could not be found.”. Apparently, Monodoc is not installed and it wasn’t obvious which package in Yast it was. After some experimentation, I discovered it was the package mono-tools.

1. Launch Yast and select Software Management.
2. Type in mono-tools in the search, select mono-tools and click install.

Additional Problems

Unfortunately, there are additional problems that still needs to be resolved:

• When I toggle the bookmark on my editor, I get the following exception:exception occurred: libglib-2.0.so
  

  System.DllNotFoundException: libglib-2.0.so
  at (wrapper managed-to-native) MonoDevelop.SourceEditor.Gui.SourceEditorBuffer:g_slist_free (intptr)
  at MonoDevelop.SourceEditor.Gui.SourceEditorBuffer.ToggleMark (Int32 linenum, SourceMarkerType type) [0x00000]
  at MonoDevelop.SourceEditor.Gui.SourceEditorBuffer.ToggleBookmark (Int32 linenum) [0x00000]
  at MonoDevelop.SourceEditor.Gui.SourceEditorView.OnButtonPressEvent (Gdk.EventButton e) [0x00000]
  at Gtk.Widget.buttonpressevent_cb (IntPtr widget, IntPtr evnt) [0x00000]