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I have recently gained access to a Mac. I am wondering if anyone has any tips/advice for setting up Mono on a mac for development and execution of ASP.NET? Most resources point to Linux implementations which tend to differ a lot from the way Mac's do things. Any tips or advice would be helpful

MikeJ
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    A couple of people noted VM solutions. this isnt helpful - I was given a MAC and I wanted to work in asp.net in a different environment. my lennovo laptop runs VS very nicely but it doesnt teach me about the possibility of working with mono and not windows. – MikeJ Sep 21 '08 at 13:58
  • Good question...I have a mac arriving this week and want to try mono too without all my Windows crutches. – Kev Sep 30 '08 at 04:30

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To launch the development ASP.NET server, just open a terminal window and run the "xsp2" command from the Mono installation.

The only thing that is missing from the Mono distribution on the Mac compared to Linux is the Apache module, that one you will have to compile yourself if you want to deploy your application in production on OSX.

miguel.de.icaza
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  • Thank you. I was at least able to run a page in a manner similar to the cassini web server on windows. – MikeJ Sep 21 '08 at 13:56
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Since I first worked with mono osx, they've added Cocoa# and ObjC#, but the ASP.NET core was pretty solid (about 3 years ago). You can in fact write web applications according to the Onion book, and port 'em to IIS with little or no difficulty.

Purfideas
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Honestly if you want to run ASP.NET you probably don't want to struggle with getting it to run via mono on MacOS. Intel-based Macintoshes can boot Windows, and Apple provides Windows drivers for their various devices as part of Boot Camp.

Alternately you can buy Parallels or VMWare Fusion for less than $100. I use VMWare Fusion. There is also a Mac version of VirtualBox from Sun which is free, though I have never used it.

For MacOS development (not .Net) you really should try Apple's XCode. It is free. It primarily focuses on Objective C though Python, Ruby, and other languages can be used to develop native Mac applications.


Edit 9/22: I'm sorry neither you nor Kev found this a useful answer. Let me try to expand a bit: the Macintosh has a long history of software being ported in from Windows, applying a theme to make the GUI elements look Mac-like but otherwise being content with a minimum cost port. Such software never behaves like a real Mac application: it doesn't respond to AppleEvents, it won't be scriptable, it handles only the cross-platform clipboard formats, etc.

You're free to do whatever you want, including running ASP.NET using mono. If its for your personal use, knock yourself out. However if you're considering it as a way to offer your web-enabled product in a Mac version, I urge you to reconsider. The Mac market has for the most part rejected such products. You'll get some sales, but nothing like you would get for an app which behaves like a native Mac application.

Now, let the down-voting continue.

DGentry
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  • Again why not answer the question ? OP asked how to do this on a Mac he didn't ask how to run Mono on a bunch of other tech he probably already knows about. – Kev Sep 20 '08 at 19:10
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You can also run ASP.NET via NGINX - easy to install using: sudo brew install nginx

See installation tutorial: http://www.robertmulley.com/tutorial/nginx-install-and-setup-mac-os-x-mavericks/ See configuration steps for your app: http://www.mono-project.com/docs/web/fastcgi/nginx/ (Note: see my pull request as the fastcgi-mono-server4 should now be used - https://github.com/mono/website/pull/82/files)

Philippe Monnet
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Why use Mono on a Mac? Run Parallels, VMWare, or Boot Camp.

easeout
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  • Why not?...OP asked how to get started, why not just answer the question or not at all? – Kev Sep 20 '08 at 19:07
  • His problem appears to be running ASP.NET on a Mac, no more. He pointed out that he is new to Macs. He considered Linux, for one, but rejected it because it wasn't "the way Macs do things". And I am saying, if there is a standar way that a Mac runs ASP.NET, it's by delegating the task to Windows. – easeout Sep 23 '08 at 06:07
  • You're not reading the question...mono has a good ASP.NET implementation, that's what he wants to use on his Mac....natively. He didn't say he disregarded Linux as an OS, what he said was that the linux config steps were different hence the question. – Kev Sep 30 '08 at 04:29