Running .NET binary with mono

Question

When I have abc.exe generated from C#/Mono source, I use 'mono abc.exe'.

Is there a way to run abc.exe with 'abc.exe' not 'mono abc.exe'? I mean, when I run 'abc.exe', can I make 'mono abc.exe' called automatically?

Answer 1

See this link

Basically what you have to do is to use one of the Mono tools (mkbundle is a generic one while macpack is designed to work on Mac OS X) to link all your application executables, resources and dll in a single executable file that can be later run as a single app.

From the macpack doc:

macpack is a tool that must be used to bundle Cocoa# applications into Double-Clickable, Finder friendly, bundles on Mac OS X. It bundles static libraries and resources, as well as generates a basic info.plist into the .app bundle.

For example the following commands are used to build the CurrencyConverter.exe into an application bundle:

$ mcs -g -debug+ CurrencyConverter.cs -out:CurrencyConverter.exe -pkg:cocoa-sharp
$ rm -rf CurrencyConverter.app
$ macpack -m:2 -o:.  -r:/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/Current/lib/    
  libCocoaSharpGlue.dylib -r:CurrencyConverter.nib -n:CurrencyConverter 
  -a:CurrencyConverter.exe

The resulting CurrencyConverter.app is just another Mac OS X application as far as the Finder is concerned, and can be opened from Finder, or launched from Terminal using the open -a CurrencyConverter command.

Answer 2

Improving Calavera’s answer to allow you to do it with a parameter, the script should look like:

#!/bin/bash
mono $1

That way you can do:

./abc.sh name_of_the_app.exe

_{I would have added this as a comment, but the format would have been lost}

Answer 3

I don't have a lot of experience with mono but you'll probably have to create an executable shell script that does the mono call for you. Something like:

$ vi abc.sh

#!/bin/bash
#abc.sh
mono abc.exe
:wq

$ chmod +x abc.sh
$ ./abc.sh