NOTE: THESE INSTRUCTIONS ARE DEPRECATED.

Recently, we’ve been trying to make the experience for users of MonoDevelop on OS X just a bit better. Things were in a pretty sorry shape in terms of comfortableness. This is still an ongoing effort, but hopefully the automated build process we’ve put together below will make it just a bit easier for users to try the cutting edge which includes many features and fixes for OS X.  Namely, better gtk+ support and a working debugger.

Instead of rewriting an entire build daemon we have opted to re-use jhbuild.  It seems to work pretty well on OS X already which is a plus.  Since many will not be familiar with the setup of jhbuild and how to add modulesets there is a short script to do so. This should get everything you need to enable trunk builds of mono, mono-debugger, monodevelop, and Christian’s gtk+ branch with various OS X patches applied. It is also rebased on gtk+ master fairly requently.

Regrettably, webkit-gtk does not currently build on our current OS X installations.  There were a couple small fixes required where the macros for checking the platform weren’t used correctly.  But even after fixing those, the build system was trying to create a 1.6 Gb static library. Naturally, the mmap() output file consumed the rest of the memory in the user-split of the 32bit address space and caused the vm allocator to throw-up.

Everything installed by jhbuild will be within its own prefix, so you need not worry about it effecting the rest of your system.

First off, you will need the Git version control system to check out code.  If you do not yet have this then you can get it from http://code.google.com/p/git-osx-installer/downloads/list?can=3.

Alternatively, here is a direct link http://git-osx-installer.googlecode.com/files/git-1.6.4-intel-leopard.dmg.

For those wanting the very succinct installation instructions, those are directly below. If you want the “why” then go down a few lines where comments are provided inline.

curl -o setup.py http://git.dronelabs.com/mono-osx-fi...ono_jhbuild.py

chmod +x setup.py

./setup.py –prefix=/Users/chergert/mono

~/.local/bin/jhbuild build monodevelop

~/.local/bin/jhbuild shell

monodevelop

Now for those of you wanting the “why”, let me step you through the process quick by example. Fire up Terminal.app from /Applications/Utilities.

# grab my python script to set everything up

curl -o setup.py http://git.dronelabs.com/mono-osx-fi...ono_jhbuild.py

# make the script executable

chmod +x setup.py

# execute the script with our desired installation prefix

# after running this you will see a bunch of output related

# to bootstrapping your system's build environment

./setup.py –prefix=/Users/chergert/mono

…

# after the above has completed successfully, you'll see a a short

# overview of how to use it. We'll reiterate that right here for

# completeness

# !!!

# You will need to start a new terminal instance at this point

# since shell paths were modified

# !!!

# lets build glib, mono, gtk+, mono-debugger, gtk-sharp, mono-addins

# monodevelop and a few other necessities

jhbuild build monodevelop

…

# after some time has passed, you should have an up to date system

# as long as mono trunk is not broken. The reason we depend on

# trunk right now is for the OS X debugger

# Let's run monodevelop!

jhbuild shell

monodevelop

# That's it!

If you have any problems with the script, email Christian directly at “chris at dronelabs dot com” or vwduder in IRC.  If you have any bugs with gtk+, email Christian directly with a short example and screenshot if you can (Command Shift 3) and I’ll file the bug and hopefully fix it for you.