Introduction to Mono on macOS

For macOS I use two commands together to show information about the processes listening on the machine and process connecting to remote servers. In other words, to check the listening ports and the current (TCP) connections on a host you could use the two following commands together. Netstat -p tcp -p udp 2. Lsof -n -i4TCP -i4UDP.

Mono supports macOS version 10.9 (Mavericks) and later.

You can use Mono on macOS to build server, console and GUI applications. Read below for the options available for GUI application development.

If you are interested in creating native GUI applications, use the MonoMac bindings and our MonoDevelop add-in. Read the description on MonoMac for more information on how to get started.

Installing Mono on macOS

You can use Mono either as a runtime to run existing application, or as an SDK to develop new applications with Mono.

Visit the download page to find the latest macOS package. Run it and follow the instructions there, you can either get a basic runtime, or a complete runtime plus a software development kit.

If you plan on developing applications with Mono, we suggest that you also install the MonoDevelop IDE after you install Mono.

The Mono package includes:

• The Mono Runtime
• GUI Toolkits: Windows.Forms and Gtk# for macOS.
  • Note: the MonoMac GUI toolkit for native macOS GUI development is currently a separate download.
• SDK: C#, Visual Basic compilers, assemblers and tools
• XSP ASP.NET server
• Manual pages.

This package installs as a framework into /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework (the same way the Java packages are installed). The executable binaries can be found in /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/Current/bin. If you’d like to access the mono manpages you’ll have to add /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/Current/man to your manpath. The macOS Mono package does not include Gtk#, XSP or mod_mono. These will have to be compiled from source.

Our packages currently require macOS version 10.9 or later, for older versions, you will need to build from source code.

Using Mono on macOS

At this point, you must use Mono from the command line, the usual set of commands that are available on other ports of Mono are available.

To build applications you can use “mcs”, to run then you can use mono.

From a Terminal shell, you can try it out:

Most users would be using the MonoDevelop IDE to create their projects.

You will have a choice of GUI toolkits for building your application, from pure cross platform, to Mac-specific using MonoMac.

32 and 64 bit support

The Mono packages published on this web site provide both a 32-bit and a 64-bit Mono VM.

Starting from Mono 5.2 the mono command defaults to 64-bit, you can use the --arch=32/64 switch to control the bitness.

The 64 bit support has a few limitations today:

• Our Windows.Forms implementation uses Carbon, and as such, it would not work with a 64-bit Mono.

Do I Have To Use Bindings In Macos Apps Download

Building Client Applications

There are a few choices to build client applications on macOS, you should pick the technology that better fits your goals, your choices are:

Running Mono applications on macOS

Running applications on macOS is very similar to linux systems, from the terminal:

For GTK# applications, it’s easiest to run them the same way but using xterm from X11.app

Windows.Forms

Mono’s implementation of the System.Windows.Forms API is built on top of Carbon and can only run with Mono on 32 bit systems. The look and feel of System.Windows.Forms applications mimics the Windows style and does not currently render like a native macOS application.

Third Party Libraries

ObjC# is a transparent two way bridge that allows the CLR to access the rich underlying ObjectiveC frameworks as well as providing direct access to the CLR frameworks from the ObjectiveC language.

Uninstalling Mono on macOS

Run this script in a terminal:

Back in .NET Conf 2017 The Xamarin team already shared what’s going to be new with Xamarin Forms 3.0 and it actually surprised me. I was expecting some performance improvements, bug fixing and a big upgrade on XAML. But, what they announced focuses on enabling the usage of Xamarin.Forms in more ways and on more platforms. I was really hoping for XAML improvements, maybe add some cascading styling like how CSS works. Maybe sometime in the future, we’ll get it. For now, I’ll just use the XAMLCss by warapa. Anyway if you want to watch all sessions from .NET Conf 2017, you can check it out on Channel9. Going back, I really didn’t expect these new features, but definitely, I love it and really excited to try it out!

That’s why right now, I’m going to show to you one of the exciting features added to the Xamarin.Forms 3.0 that I think you’ll also love. I’m talking about Xamarin.Form’s macOS support.

One of the Xamarin team’s plan is to reach more platforms. That means UWP, iOS and Android are not only platform the Xamarin.Forms will be able to target from now on, they are also bringing macOS, GTK#, Linux and WPF!

You might think that it will be hard and will take a lot of time to integrate your Xamarin.Forms solution into the macOS project, but it’s not. Not at all. You’ll be able to create a native macOS application using your Xamarin.Forms solution using Visual Studio for Mac or Xamarin Studio in just 3 quick steps!

First step: Add a Cocoa App project

Do I Have To Use Bindings In Macos Apps Free

Right now, Xamarin.Forms template doesn’t have a Cocoa App initially. So, what you would do is to start Visual Studio for Mac or Xamarin Studio and open your existing Xamarin.Forms solution. Then, add a project into the solution by right-clicking the solution and selecting Add > Add New Existing Project.

You can then select Mac > App > Cocoa App and name it whatever you want, but ideally, the name has a suffix of .macOs.

Second Step: Add the Xamarin.Forms NuGet Package

You will have to add the Xamarin.Forms’ latest pre-release nuget package or specifically 2.4.0.282. To do this, right click the Cocoa App project that you just created and select Add > Add Nuget Packages.

Then, search for ‘Xamarin.Forms’ and make sure that the ‘Show pre-release packages’ is ticked. Click ‘Add’ to add Xamarin.Forms nuget package.

You will also need to update the Xamarin.Forms on your shared project and the version should be the same with what the Cocoa app have.

Third Step: Configure the Cocoa App Project

The first thing that you should do with your Cocoa app project is to add the shared project into your Cocoa app as a reference.

Then, open the Info.plist and remove the ‘Main storyboard file base name’ entry (Opened with XCode)

Or just open the Info.plist inside Visual Studio or Xamarin Studio by clicking it and leave the Main Interface blank.

Do I Have To Use Bindings In Macos Apps 10

The next one is to update your Main.cs’ Main method to initialize the AppDelegate:

Lastly, update the AppDelegate by changing the NSApplicationDelegate to FormsApplicationDelegate:

Initialize the Cocoa app window within the constructor:

Then inside the DidFinishLaunching method, initialize Xamarin.Forms and load the application:

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You can now set your project as the startup project and run your macOS!

Again, in just 3 quick steps, it’s done!

This is just a basic walkthrough since this is still on preview. Expect that there are still bugs and not ready for production. Not all nuget packages are compatible and surely, there are lots of UI features still not implemented, but this is a good start. For now, you can send your issues and problems that you encounter in this forum discussion: https://forums.xamarin.com/discussion/93585/preview-xamarin-forms-for-macos/p1