Installing MonoDevelop on Fedora Core 2 the easy way...
Using yum really turned the installation of mono v1.0 and mono-develop 0.5 into something even a Windows user like myself can do. The steps below is the steps I've and I've used these particular steps to side-step Telkom's limitation on international bandwidth usage, setting up a local yum repository is not required.
[Mono is mirrored on the Internet Solutions FTP server's so there's no need to pull if off international sites if you're South African, ftp://ftp.is.co.za/mirrors/Ximian/mono/]
Step 1 - Setup local yum repository ( This site has a great reference for setting this up. I'll only list the basic steps here)
1a) Change folder to /var/www/html (default apache root folder in default installation)
# cd /var/www/html
1b) Create a new folder to serve as yum repository root.
# mkdir yum
1c) Create a folder to serve specifically as mono repository root. I just called it fedora-2-i386 to fit with the ftp naming structure and as I'm only creating this folders to install mono the name won't conflict with anything in any ways.
# cd yum
# mkdir fedora-2-i386
1d) Retrieve the folder containing the fc2 mono rpm's from your ftp site. The IS mirror in my case.
# cd fedora-2-i386
[armand@localhost fedora-2-i386]$ ftp
ftp> open ftp.is.co.za
Connected to ftp.is.co.za (196.4.160.12).
220 Welcome to Internet Solutions FTP service. You are listed as a South African user.
Name (ftp.is.co.za:armand): anonymous
331 Please specify the password.
Password:
230 Login successful. Have fun.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp>
ftp> cd mirrors
250 Directory successfully changed.
ftp> cd Ximian
250 Directory successfully changed.
ftp> cd mono
250 Directory successfully changed.
ftp> cd fedora-2-i386
250 Directory successfully changed.
ftp> prompt n
Interactive mode off.
ftp> mget *.*
1e) Now that you've got all the file required for a successfull installation including all the dependencies there's very little left to do. Whilst in the folder containing the newly downloaded files run yum-arch to extract the headers into small seperate files. Yum works by parsing the header files and you don't want to download all the rpms just to check out the headers. Full description of how it works can be seen here.
[armand@localhost fedora-2-i386]$ yum-arch .
Digesting rpms 60 % complete: perl-XML-NamespaceSupport-1.08-1.ximian.11.1.i386.Digesting rpms 100 % complete: mono-novell-directory-1.0-1.ximian.8.1.i386.rpm
Total: 60
Used: 60
Src: 0
Writing header.info file
h .
1f) Now you should have a functional yum archive. As mono was the only packages I was interested in installing, I've updated my yum configuration file to only contain a entry to my local yum repository. If you leave the defaults in prepare for a bit of a wait as the 1st time you run yum it needs to process all the headers in all the repositories in the the config file. This adds up big time. (Before editing my yum.conf file I replaced the default one with this one from the Unoffical Fedora FAQ.)
Below is my "mono only" yum.conf after stripping out all the extras (This config file can be found under /etc/yum.conf ) :
[main]
cachedir=/var/cache/yum
debuglevel=2
logfile=/var/log/yum.log
pkgpolicy=newest
distroverpkg=fedora-release
tolerant=1
exactarch=0
# Added this because some mirrors go down and then retying takes forever.
retries=1
[mono-version]
name=Mono Version 1.0
baseurl=http://localhost/yum/fedora-2-i386/
Step 2) With all the schlep work out of the way, all that's left to do is install the mono libraries and MonoDevelop to be able to run and develop applications targeting the mono framework... There's a much better explanation to installing this here. I had some issues following those steps but will point out the differences later.
2a) Update headers and install mono. You need to run this as root so do the su thing first. (I've already installed so no action to take on my machine)
[armand@localhost /]$ su
Password:
[root@localhost /]# yum check-update
Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)
Server: Mono Version 1.0
Finding updated packages
Downloading needed headers
Name Arch Version Repo
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------gtksourceview i386 1.0.1-0.ximian.8.1 mono-version
[root@localhost /]# yum -C install mono-core-devel mono-runtime-devel
Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)
Server: Mono Version 1.0
Finding updated packages
Downloading needed headers
mono-core-devel is installed and is the latest version.
mono-runtime-devel is installed and is the latest version.
No actions to take
[root@localhost /]#
No you should have mono installed and
2b) This step is extra, just following the steps from the Equivocal Ramblings (url above) led to the following error on my machine :
** (./MonoDevelop.exe:2757): WARNING **: Could not find assembly Mono.Posix, references from /usr/lib/monodevelop/bin/./MonoDevelop.exe (assemblyref_index=3)
Major/Minor: 1,0
Build: 5000,0
Token: 0738eb9f132ed756
cannot open assembly ./MonoDevelop.exe
The resolution is documented here. Just run the following before installing monodevelop to ensure your environment is setup properly :
[root@localhost /]# yum install mono-complete
2c) Install MonoDevelop
[root@localhost /]# yum install monodevelop
With a lot less effort and frustration I now had a working MonoDevelop 0.5 installation. Thanks Reyn for telling me about Yum.