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Mono 2.4, MonoDevelop 2.0 Advance Cross-Platform .NET Development
The Mono Project, a Novell-sponsored open source initiative, announced the release of Mono 2.4, an open source implementation of the .NET development framework for the Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris and UNIX operating systems.
The new version focuses on improving performance and providing a robust, scalable platform for multi-processor server applications and environments, said Miguel de Icaza, Novell senior vice president and creator of the Mono framework.
Mono 2.4 is also the first version to include commercial support for enterprise deployments. The release includes the SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono Extension, which provides upgrades and support for enterprise Mono deployments.
"In the past, it has very much been an open source desktop story," de Icaza said of Mono. "This is the first time we are going to be supporting third-party customers. This is the first time where the product is really aimed at running server apps under Windows, or in particular ASP.NET apps."
Mono 2.4 also sets its sights on the fast-growing arena of ASP.NET development, enabling Linux servers to host ASP.NET 3.5 applications. De Icaza said ASP.NET compatibility is "pretty complete," lacking only support for ASP.NET Web Parts. Mono 2.4 is fully compatible with ASP.NET MVC. "We hope we can basically mainstream ASP.NET development on Linux," de Icaza said.
More information about Mono 2.4 can be found here.
Also released on Monday was MonoDevelop 2.0, an updated version of the Linux-based integrated development environment (IDE) for Mono that de Icaza called "basically our Visual Studio for Linux and Mac."
MonoDevelop 2.0 allows Linux-based developers to write desktop and ASP.NET Web applications using a variety of languages, including C#, Visual Basic.NET and Java. MonoDevelop 2.0 provides improved support for ASP.NET and C# 3.0, an integrated debugger and interoperability improvements for developers who need to share their projects with Visual Studio 2008.
MonoDevelop can be downloaded here.
About the Author
Michael Desmond is an editor and writer for 1105 Media's Enterprise Computing Group.