Building MonoDevelop on Ubuntu

(work in progress. Written from repeated building experience. Someone try this out on a clean installation and tell me if it works)

To build MonoDevelop Trunk on Ubuntu 9.04:

1. Get all the dependencies: You can do this by adding source repositories in your sources.list (If you haven't modified your sources.list extensively you probably already have it). Run the command:
   # sudo apt-get install build-essential subversion
   # sudo apt-get build-dep monodevelop
   # sudo apt-get install mono-xbuild
2. Install the latest version of Mono and the Mono Compiler. You can find the latest stable source download here .
3. You will achieve optimum results if you install a parallel copy of Mono and MonoDevelop and not modify the one included in your distribution. To do this, follow the guide available here.
4. The optimum order for building packages are:
   1. libgdiplus
   2. mono (this installs both runtime and compiler)
   3. gtk-sharp
   4. gnome-sharp
   5. gnome-desktop-sharp
   6. mono-tools
   7. mono-addins
   8. mono-debugger
   9. monodoc
5. Check out the head revision of MonoDevelop from svn.
   # svn co svn://anonsvn.mono-project.com/sourc...nk/monodevelop
6. Source the Bash script which you originally wrote while installing mono
   # source ~/mono-dev/env
7. Use the --select argument to build optional add-ins to cater to your requirements from the MonoDevelop source path. We recommend keeping this version of monodevelop in parallel with the previously existing one.
   # ./configure --select --prefix=/opt/monodevelop
8. Build and install using "make".
   # make && sudo make install
9. Modify the shell script that you used to install mono to launch MonoDevelop at the end. This may not be the official way, but it works. So it looks like:
   

   #!/bin/bash
   MONO_PREFIX=/opt/mono
   GNOME_PREFIX=/opt/gnome
   export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$MONO_PREFIX/lib:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH
   export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$MONO_PREFIX/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
   export C_INCLUDE_PATH=$MONO_PREFIX/include:$GNOME_PREFIX/include
   export ACLOCAL_PATH=$MONO_PREFIX/share/aclocal
   export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$MONO_PREFIX/lib/pkgconfig:$GNOME_PREFIX/lib/pkgconfig
   PATH=$MONO_PREFIX/bin:$PATH
   /opt/monodevelop/bin/monodevelop

10. Save this to /usr/bin/monodevelop-trunk. Make it executable by:
    # sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/monodevelop-trunk
11. Now you can run monodevelop-trunk and start the IDE.

This hasn't been tested. Please email anirudh@anirudhsanjeev.org if you find any errors.

Last updated: 30/6/2009