Developing with C# on OSX and Mono

Question

I\'m about to start a project that requires me to write c# code. The thing is, I\'ve got a mac.

I was wondering if there are any pitfalls involved in c# development usin

Answer 1

I've come across odd cases of memory leaks and segfaults with code compiled on Windows and dropped onto a Mono Linbox as-is. I've also had issues compiling .csproj files with xbuild that had some MS quirk that xbuild wasn't familiar with.

If I'm not mistaken, the two compilers do slightly different things at times, which are related to subtle implementation differences in the runtimes. This is most likely the cause of the segfaults and memory leaks I've come across.

My bottom line is, compile on the same platform as the runtime. So for local testing, you should be fine (you compile on mono on your mac and run/test with mono on your mac). But don't build the project on your mac and then release the resulting Mono binaries to Windows servers running MS .NET runtime (or vice versa). If you have a build server best would be to stick to that (which we all should do anyway... right?).

If your team doesn't have a build process and you must build the binaries you are going to release, I would use a Windows VM for that final step.