Volition

So I decided to try out writing a Gnome application in C#, using Mono, just to see what all the fuss is about. Three days later, I still haven't been able to get Mono running to the point were I could start working on and testing the app.

The idea for the app is pretty simple, I want to write a front-end application for contacts using the Evolution Data Server (included in Gnome 2.6), something equivalent to the Address Book application on MacOS X. Something less than Evolution itself but more useful than the Contact Lookup Applet.

This turned out to be relatively impossible out-of-the-box because the Mono and C# Debian packages are one version of of date. I thought the CLI was supposed to fix all these versioning problems anyway. Well, whatever. Compiling the seven packages needed to get MonoDevelop working turned out to be impossible (compiling in the required ICU support for Mono seemed to kill the runtime and hence everything else). I could forget using MonoDevelop. But that would involve finding, installing and learning a C# mode for Emacs, recompiling Mono, MCS and gtk-sharp again (without ICU support) and hope it works this time, but I really can't be bothered after having wasting two days on it already.

So I'm pretty unimpressed with the state of Mono at the moment. It seems a hell of a lot easier to just install a JDK and go. I will try again once the Debian packages are updated, however.