ASP.NET MVC, MonoDevelop and Windows

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+5 Q:

ASP.NET MVC, MonoDevelop and Windows

According to Miguel de Icaza posts (here and here) and Lluis Sanchez Gual post (here and here) MonoDevelop for Windows will be ready soon. Personally I'm very interesed in using MonoDevelop under Windows for developing open source projects for ASP.NET MVC. Yes, it's better to work in MonoDevelop under Linux but for many reasons I can not simply stop using Windows (IIS7 is one of these reasons - today it is much better for ASP.NET than XSP).

Question N1: Would somebody ever try developing something in ASP.NET MVC using MonoDevelop on Windows when it will be released?

Question N2: Are there any advantages in using MonoDevelop on Windows as opposed to Visual Web Developer Express 2008?

Question N3: Both IDE (MonoDevelop and VWD Express) are free, but which is actually preferable/better for open source developing and why (it is very interesting for me)?

EDITED:

Yes, I am using full Visual Studio 2008 Pro and it's a great IDE. But it can not be used for open source developing - I think it is nonsense. I've actually paid for it - but I can't expect it from users of my library. So I can choose only Mono Develop or VWD Express? (see Question N3)

Thanks

+3 A:

N1: I'm sure there will be plenty of folks that will try out MonoDevelop for ASP.NET MVC.

N2: If you're focusing more on a cross platform experience with your application, I would say MonoDeveop is the way to go since your apps written in MonoDevelop are sure to run on Mono. If you use Visual Web Developer Express, you're still going to need to run MOMA or some other compatibility checking application to make sure that there has been any Mono incompatible libraries/methods injected into the architecture.

N3: That's a hard call to make. I haven't tried out MonoDevelop yet, so I think it would depend on the developer experience between each IDE and see which one weighs heavier: the compatibility ease (see N2), or the development ease, and simply dealing with the compatibility testing/porting.

Dillie-O 2009-05-14 18:08:03

Thanks for your answer

eu-ge-ne 2009-05-15 15:32:17

+3 A:

N1: I tried MVC on mono-develop in Linux and that worked.

N2: There are both advantages and disadvantages. I use visual studio pro and I don't exactly know what's different in Mono-develop. I know there are some features available in mono-develop that are available in visual studio with plugins only, not in the express version.

N3: I think personal preference will decide what's better for you. I think the easiest way to find out is to download the Mono Vmware image and try it. You might have to update the mono-develop packages to use the MVC features of mono-develop. You can use the vmware image with the free version of vmware. Personally I prefer Visual Studio pro because I'm used to it and I'm addicted to resharper.

Paco 2009-05-14 21:51:45

Thanks Paco. Visual Studio is a great IDE but unfortunaly it is not free. I cant release an open source project which can be built only in "full" version of Visual Studio - so there are no alternatives - only Mono Develop or VWD Express.

eu-ge-ne 2009-05-15 15:39:47

When releasing an open source project, you should never make it dependent on a specific IDE, not even on a free IDE. The best way to build is a single batchfile/shellscript that you can execute to build the whole project, run the tests, etc, without having any IDE installed. Nant, MSbuild and Rake are the most populair build tools for dotnet.

Paco 2009-05-15 21:34:21

Paco, you are right(+1) but what about people, who wants to contribute - if they would no have full Visual Studio ?

eu-ge-ne 2009-05-16 15:48:50

eu-ge-ne, you can develop a project in Visual Studio without dependencies on VS. Like Paco said, you can develop a build with Nant (open-source) that doesn't require Visual Studio.

sgwill 2009-05-16 17:37:32

Sam I actually mean "VisualStudio-specific features", such as MSTest, different designers, templates, which are not supported in both VWD and Mono Develop.

eu-ge-ne 2009-05-16 17:43:15

The use an open source testing framework (like NUnit) instead of MStest. What kind of designers do you mean? I dont't think you need any visual studio templates to create an open source project. All the code I write is IDE independent.

Paco 2009-05-16 18:47:34

Are You saying that open source developing using commercial IDE is it normal? And I shouldn't worry about it (using VWD or MonoDevelop)? Simply providing NAnt or MSBuild scripts - is it enought? Thanks

eu-ge-ne 2009-05-16 20:04:40

Yes that is what I'm saying. As long as anyone can use it on any computer with some kind of .Net framework installed, you won't have to worry about limiting the audience of your open source project, you can target users with all kinds of IDEs. The best is to include all the tools to build and run the project in the download and include a file that you can click to build to project and a readme.txt with instructions when needed.

Paco 2009-05-16 22:54:46

What kind of open source projects are you planning?

Paco 2009-05-16 22:55:24

Paco, thanks for your answers.

eu-ge-ne 2009-05-19 19:05:19

+2 A:

VisStud is so much better than MonoDevelop with all of the auto-* stuff. But there is danger in not understanding what the stud generates. My choice is to use VisStud to develop in and port to Mono periodically.

kenny 2009-05-21 12:05:16

Thanks Kenny. Currently I am developing in the Visual Studio 2008 Pro and trying to port to Mono. But my question was about MonoDevelop - maybe it is better to use it for opensource developing. What do you think?

eu-ge-ne 2009-05-21 14:40:38

Hey Eu-ge-ne....yeah, better not to assume if you can w/o pulling out your hair, but... it's your hair.

kenny 2009-05-21 14:49:20

Hi Kenny, maybe you are right (+1)

eu-ge-ne 2009-05-23 14:29:09

+1 A:

N1: I have not used MVC so I can't anything abt it yet.
N2: MonoDevelop is like pro edition of VS, but it doesn't have good designer. But lacks some important features like reports.
N3: For web my preference will be VWD but for other stuff I'll prefer MonoDevelop and SharpDevelop

Sharique 2009-05-23 14:04:36

N2 - interesting opinion. Anyway thanks

eu-ge-ne 2009-05-23 14:27:51

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