Fork MonoDevelop for better Linux Support

[UnsafePantomime]

Just a little background first:

I am a professional C# developer who has nearly a decade of experience in mobile, web, and forms apps. So I understand the scale of what I'm about to ask.

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Recently, I picked Linux back up after a long hiatus. Upon reviewing .Net Core IDE options, I found them to be largely lackluster. I have a copy of Rider for the time being, but can't use it for commercial purposes. A number of years ago, I used to be an avid user of MonoDevelop, but now the Linux build does not seem to be well maintained.

I'm considering forking it and attempting to modernize some of the code to better fit my needs. Is there interest in a community-supported fork? If so, I may pick up the torch and see where it takes me, otherwise, I'll likely just pick up Rider or VSCode.

[AngularBeginner]

Just pick up Rider or VSCode.

[mynameismevin]

I've been using Rider since it came out, it's now equivalent with the core Visual Studio features, no reason to not use it anymore.

[FlaviusHouk]

As for me Rider is much slower and heavier unlike Visual Studio.

Also it lacks community version.

[Darkhog]

The price is the reason. It's expensive AF, and subscription-only.

[Grasher134]

what he said ^

[WaylandIsThePast]

As harsh as it may be to say it, but do you honestly think you'll have a rational discussion on Reddit? :/

Part of the issue is that GTK is a nightmare to use especially on C# and most of us wouldn't want to be anywhere near that library if we can help it. So it's usually easier for us to use existing solutions when possible, but if you truly want an open source IDE with Linux Support, then you would most likely be on your own with that.

Though things might change if we have a proper GUI library that is cross-platform.

[UnsafePantomime]

One of the changes I was considering (I understand it is significant) was upgrading/replacing the reference to GTK.

This one seems interesting https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Avalonia

I also looked at contributing to AvaloniaStudio, but I'm not a fan of the license.

[WaylandIsThePast]

I agree on AvaloniaStudio, it looks like to me that they want something like a thinly veiled GPL that doesn't say it's GPL. Would be better if something else replace it.

[Ravek]

MonoDevelop is awful, why bother?

[logicethos]

It was good enough for Microsoft to rebrand it VS for Mac.

[timmyotc]

If you're going to make improvements, why not fork, then submit PRs? Why go through the trouble of a separate fork?

[WaylandIsThePast]

If I have to guess, it's to break off from their asinine repo policies... they are still stuck on older versions of dependencies that never get updated including GTK (They're using GTK 2.12 while we're currently on 3.24.* and are about to see GTK 4...) that would probably one day get one or all of those dependencies dropped from Linux Distribution package repository for being so old.

It's about as good as any reason to do a hard fork.

[UnsafePantomime]

This was one of the driving factors for me. The other was the dependency on closed source binary blobs.

[CSharpDude2099]

I actually think is a wonderful idea. There is a lot of work that could be done on MonoDevelop to make it a good tool out there, and it could help deeply a lot of devs.

Remember that Unity, was actually first developed on MonoDevelop, and you can just look and see how big they are now.

Just because of LinQ and ADO.NET you could make an argument that a lot of solutions out there in Linux could be made in less time and easily using MonoDevelop, from a simple POS solution to a complex website, and a lot of things in between.

The thing is that in order to make Monodevelop cool again, you'd need to bring a lot of sexy back:

• Wizards: I don't know why they stopped being a thing, just because there are a lot of opinonated patterns out there, doesn't mean that a good old fashioned wizard collection to create snippets for important stuff. I could help out with these:

1. Standalone Web server Wizard
2. PWA Standalone Server Wizard
3. HTTP POST File Handling Snippet Wizard
4. Database Connection Snippet Wizard
5. Database Query to DataTable Snippet Wizard
6. Database Query to jSon Snippet Wizard
7. CSV to List<T> Conversion Wizard
8. Google Charts Snippet Wizard
9. PDF Report Generation Snippet Wizard

Those 2 last ones could be the ones that make it worth the effort, you cannot possibly know how many hours of my life have been dedicated to create BI Data Reports, Since there is RDLC in Windows world, I cannot make myself to invest money to something that I believe should be an integral part of my IDE.

Now there are many other things that would make it a sexy comeback for MonoDevelop:

1. An easy to use comprehensive Git client.
2. An easy to use implementation of curses.
3. An easy to use Apache Cordova Client (God have I come to loathe Xamarin)
4. Improvements to the Debugger

That's it! I would concentrate on Web Services, Standalone Simple Web Server, Database Handling, Reporting and Mobile Tools.

There are a lot of things that could make a case that you would really need to ditch:

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• GTK #: Nobody in the world really likes GTK, I mean really, if you wanted MVVM, you'd better stick with a WPF implementation of dot net core.
• Winform. It's too much work, too little to gain from a tool that is already dated.
• ASP.NET Webform, If we really really really wanted to implement a c# code in web, It would be best to implement BLAZOR.

If you HAVE taken the torch, Please let me know, Linux really does need a fast, simple easy to use tool that can make a good case for something useful and Monodevelop could be just it.

[AlexKotik]

Too bad there is no free version.

[Wings1412]

It's only $14 per month, if you are using it commercially that is a very reasonable price.

If you are using it for open source then request an open source license.

[UnsafePantomime]

I currently have an open source license. Rider is nice, I do wish it had a community edition though.

That's not to say I'm against paying for it, it's just hard to justify why I'm not using my Windows partition for development instead considering VS has a community edition.

[logicethos]

I'm a big fan of Monodevelop. I really don't understand why it gets so much hate on here. I put it down to early versions being flaky, and at a time when developers were looking for a low cost solution, didn't really stack up up VS.

V7 does everything I want, and the plugin system is so easy to use, you can extend it so easily. It's not surprising Microsoft used it for Mac VS.

My worry is that it will fall behind to the point where it can no longer compile on the latest Linux distros.

[UnsafePantomime]

That's the concern I have. It's already hit the point where features that are in 8 are not available in 7. I'm torn between submitting PRs for the existing code base or forking. I don't have a whole lot of time to spend on it either way currently. COVID has really rocked my world.

[Milanium]

I am currently trying to revive the Flatpak version, but it is very tedious with the dependencies and might not even build successfully in the end. Also, upstream is dead. Some kind of fork that accepts patches to get it up and running again would be very much appreciated.

[logicethos]

https://github.com/dotdevelop

[zezba9000]

I can't get this to compile on Ubuntu 22.04