Paco's Blog

Gtk# Now Really Gets Along with MS GAC!

Thanks to Mike Kestner's latest fix, Gtk# should work without much complication in the MS GAC.

The Glade Win32 Man, Ivan Wong, helped me troubleshoot GTK 2.4 for Windows and that was the last thing necessary to make it the GTK+ version that I am bundling with both the Mono Combined Installer as well as Gtk# Win32 Installer for .NET Framework SDK 1.1.

I am aware that our current implementation of Gtk# is based on bindings to GTK 2.2 and although there may not be any great new feature specific advantages to be had by bundling with GTK 2.4, there are a number of bug fixes and optimizations that are available in 2.4 but have not and may not be ported to the older 2.2 Win32 port.

Thank you John Luke, Mauricio de Lemos Rodrigues and Daniel Morgan for the testing and the feedback.

As ususal you can find my latest installer renditions at Novell Forge.

For the Mono Combined Installer for Win32:
mono-1.0.1-gtksharp-1.0.89-win32-0.6b.exe

For the Gtk# Win32 only installer:
gtksharp-1.0.89-win32-0.5.exe

Launching Glade from Visual Studio

A new Version of the Gtk# Win32 Installer for the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 SDK has been uploaded to its usual home. Unless someone comes up with a gruesome bug, I will likely halt further releases of this installer unless I achieve the Nirvana of GTK+ 2.4.

Now when you double click on a glade file included in your project, Glade should launch ready to edit you GUI.

Ivan flat out Rocks!

Thanks to Ivan Wong for applying fixes to Glade 2.0.1 that finally made possible the Windows Shell document association for the *.glade files.

Here are a number of other Glade and GTK Win32 related items:
http://gladewin32.sourceforge.net/

Almost There

I did another cut of Gtk# Installer for Windows. New features include the addition of a Gtk# application Project Template for C# projects as well as a first cut of some of the Gtk# samples available in the CVS repository for Gtk#. More work must go into this but you should be able to build Gtk# Demo using Visual Studio .NET 2003.

I modified the directory structure a bit from the one in Mono's CVS. This was done to simplify the steps to compile and run. You can open the solution file (GtkDemo.sln) file and later press 'Ctrl+Shift+B' to compile it followed by 'Shift+F5' to run it.

One of the things that pleased me the most was using the Gtk# library reference from within the IDE while I was developing the Gtk# Template. This also made me realize that I need to make the help context sensitive.

I will put out on more installer for Gtk# 1.0 for Windows but I am pretty happy with what has been achieved so far.

One for Home and one for the Office

I now own two copies of: Mono A Developer's Notebook.

My Son

Paquito is now in Kuwait and very shortly will begin his mission in Iraq. He is in good spirits and asking for some blank CD-Rs. Paqui we all miss you a lot and are praying for you, your team members and for all the people of Iraq.

Todd: Your blog content, technical or not, is great. Keep it up!

Towards a Local Mono Reference in Win32

I have created a new Novell Forge project for prototyping Mono technologies and their integration with MS Windows.

http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/?monowin32

I will put the Mono library reference in MS Help 2.0 format once I complete the first cut of it.

In this new site you will find mono-1.0.1-gtksharp-1.0-win32-0.5d.exe this is essentially the same installer that you may find at the mono-project.com/downloads, but it should correct the problems that folks where having with some of the batch files the installer creates and other general PATH related issues.

This new installer also includes some HTML documentation for the Mono library reference but I will be the first to admit it looks hideous. As you may already imagine the content of this reference was generated from the XML files that are displayed in MonoDoc. A lot more work needs to go in generating true HTML with stylesheets and the like. In my defense, I thought that given the choice of not having a reference and having an ugly one, I would choose "having one".

Great "How To" resource

My friend Joseph Hill has created some great "Getting Started" guides over at:
http://www.monotropa.net/MonoTropa/MonoTropa.html

The Relation Between the Mono/Gtk# Win32 Installers.

I want it to point out what is the relationships between the Combined Mono/Gtk# installer, the Gtk# Win32 Installer for the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 SDK and the "work in progress" vsprj2make Visual Studio Add-in.

The Combined Mono/Gtk# installer is supposed to be as close of a representation of a Linux Mono development and runtime environment in your Win32 machine without needing to have Cygwin or MS Services for Unix.

The Gtk# Win32 Installer for the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 SDK is supposed to augment the MS .NET Framework SDK so that a programmer will have all of what she/he needs to build functional Gtk# and Glade# applications. If you are only building Microsoft .NET Framework applications but want to present a Gtk# GUI, then this is the installer for you. Mono, Cygwin or MS Services for Unix are not required in any way but the Gtk# Win32 Installer for the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 SDK was designed to coexist quite harmoniously with them. In fact there will be scenarios in which you will want to have combinations of these installers present on your system.

The "work in progress" vsprj2make Visual Studio Add-in is a complement for Visual Studio .NET 2003. Soon the maturity level of the Gtk# installer for MS .NET SDK and the Combined Mono/Gtk# installer will be at a point where I can resume work on this Add-in module. The Add-in will require the Combined installer and will benefit greatly if the Gtk# installer for MS .NET SDK is present.

The last thing I want to say is that if all you want to do is to have the Combined Mono installer. You would only be missing a decent text editor and nmake.exe.

Thank you

I want to thank Niel M. Bornstein for writing and recommending my work. I also want to thank Gonzalo Paniagua Javier for taking from his all to busy schedule and take the first stab at building the filth iteration of the combined installer that is now available at the mono-project.com/downloads page.

Links to the different projects:

Combined Mono, Gtk#, XSP Win32 Installer
http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1395&release_id=2001#selected

Gtk# Win32 Installer for the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 SDK
http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1480&release_id=1984#selected

Gtk# Library Reference for Visual Studio .NET 2003
http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1480&release_id=2000#selected

vsprj2make Visual Studio Add-in is a complement for Visual Studio .NET 2003
http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1395&release_id=1852#selected

Editor choices that Paco uses while in Windows:

PEdit (which I wrote):
http://www.mfconsulting.com/download.htm

gVim for Windows:
http://www.vim.org/download.php#pc

What Make to use in Win32

A great choice would be to install cygwin and then use the Make tools availble there. You could also use NMake which comes free of charge in the MS Platform SDK, .NET Framework SDK and with most of the Microsoft Integrated Development Environments. You could use the Make tools that are included in the Windows Services for Unix.

Link to NMake.exe download
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q132084

Link to cygwin:
http://cygwin.com

Link to Windows Services for Unix
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/downloads/default.asp

We all need Help!

Well, I am getting closer to deliver on the Gtk# Library Reference for Visual Studio .NET 2003. They say a picture is worth 1,000 words, and for those who know me...

Take the picture. Really! :)

Carlos, Mauricio and Joseph I am not blowing you guys off. HEALTHvision has me very, very busy :(

Some folks have asked me about all of this stuff I am putting out being compatible with Visual C# Express 2005. One day it will be. But for now, not to depress you all, but I am the same guy who is still doing Visual Studio 6.0 for C++. Don't worry, now days I am from Texas, so we belive on the "No Child Left Behind" thingy.

Gtk# Windows Installer

I have been smiling for two days now. I have completed my first cut of the Gtk# Win32 Installer for Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 SDK. The ultimate goal of this installer is to provide the best development experience when creating Gtk# applications in a Windows development environment.

Again, this is just the first pass, but already this installer will make it so that all you need to do are these 4 steps:

• Install Windows


• Install Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 SDK or Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 (for the best possible experience)


• Install Gtk# Win32 Installer for Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 SDK.


• Restart your system and begin creating Gtk# and Glade# applications from within Visual Studio(as seen on this tutorial included with the installer) or the Command prompt.

Gone are the days of having to go through a lot of steps to ensure your development environment had all the bases covered in order to enjoy step-debugging and integrated development within Visual Studio.

Links

Novell Forge Project Page
More Screen Shots

Gracias

I want to thank my two beautiful girls Maria (madre) and Monica (hija) for cutting me some slack while developing this installer. I also want to commend PJ Cabrera for collecting feedback in Puerto Rico -- I only get to see Texas and Boston Win32 developers now days.

Special thanks to Mauricio and Carlos my two new Brazilian hacking acquaintances, for their drive motivation and ideas that went a long way to inspire this effort.

Installing Gtk# libraries in the Microsoft GAC

The world of community collaboration has produced a nice tutorial on how to register the Gtk# assemblies included in the combined Mono installer for Windows into the Microsoft .NET Framework GAC. The text is good and contains some good tips that are useful when learning how to install strongly named libraries into the MS GAC and other trouble shooting techniques.

The tutorial was inspired by an IRC session we had yesterday and is courtesy of Mikko Korkalo (F-Solutions Oy).

The tutorial is available here:
http://lappi.skai.fi/~mikkoko/misc/mono_gtksharp_win32_vsnet_tutorial.txt

The transcript of the IRC session (in case we have forgotten to document something) can be found here:
http://lappi.skai.fi/~mikkoko/misc/mono_gtksharp_win32_vsnet_irclog.txt

Depending on how much time Maria and Monica decide to donate to the community this Sunday, I may be making some very simple examples of Gtk# and Glade applications for MS .NET Framework using the techniques covered in the tutorial.

Erik you are getting so many travel miles that the next upgrade the airline will offer you is to fly the plane!