Cross-Platform .NET Development: Using Mono, Portable .NET, and Microsoft .NET [Hardcover]

M.J. Easton (Author), Jason King (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1590593308 | ISBN-13: 978-1590593301 | Publication Date: September 22, 2004 | Edition: 1

Taking a radical departure from past practices, Microsoft successfully lobbied ECMA to turn its C# and .NET software specifications into an ECMA standard, thereby allowing others to create and release compilers, software, and runtimes for the .NET environment.

Since the release of the standard, several projects have undertaken the development of open source .NET capable of running on Wintel and non-Wintel platforms, such as Linux, Unix, and Mac OS X. The best known of these projects are Mono (from Novell, formerly Ximian), and Portable.NET from Southern Storm and the GNU Project. But can all of these implementations of .NET interoperate? Can you take a Windows .NET application and run it on Linux? The answer is yes, if you understand the issues.

Cross-Platform .NET Development is the first book to examine the advantages and issues of building portable, cross-platform .NET code. Using this book, a programmer that’s even a little familiar with .NET can learn how to run the same .NET code on Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Windows, using Mono (on Linux), Portable.NET (on Mac OS X) and .NET on Windows. Filled with example code and wisdom – do’s, dont’s, pitfalls, gotchas, and insights from two experienced .NET developers – Cross-Platform .NET Development shows why .NET isn’t just for Windows anymore.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jason King is a senior programmer and computer consultant who has worked with .NET since its first release. In the past, King also worked with Linux and Mac OS X, making him an ideal author for a book spanning three different sets of tools on three different operating systems. Like Mark Easton, King too has a deliciously twisted sense of humor.

Mark Easton is a senior programmer and computer consultant who has worked with .NET since its first release. In the past, Easton has also worked with Linux and Mac OS X, making him an ideal author for a book spanning three different sets of tools on three different operating systems. Easton also has a deliciously twisted sense of humor.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 560 pages
• Publisher: A-Press; 1 edition (September 22, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590593308
• ISBN-13: 978-1590593301
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #190,786 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #1 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Cross-platform Development
  • #20 in Books > Computers & Technology > Microsoft > Development > .NET

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars alternatives to Microsoft, October 21, 2004

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cross-Platform .NET Development: Using Mono, Portable .NET, and Microsoft .NET (Hardcover)

Microsoft and cross-platform?! Sounds like an oxymoron. Yet the book shows how .NET has given rise to this. The key step was Microsoft transferring the specifications of C# and .NET's CLI to ECMA and ISO. This lets third parties write compilers that produce IL bytecode and thence to assembly in a given hardware.

So you could write C# code on some platform, like linux. Then with Mono or Portable.NET, produce x86 binaries.

The authors describe the open source Mono and Portable, and compare these with Microsoft's own .NET offerings. They show that Mono and Portable are quite functional. For example, using Portable, you can write in Java, C#, C or VB.NET and compile.

The book goes into some moderate level of detail about CLI. But if you are a programmer in C# or C, say, and you just want to get native binaries, without wanting to know about CLI, the book is still useful. You can safely skip the CLI sections, without losing the gist of what you need to know. For many of us, whatever language we use, we don't need or want knowledge of a specific assembly language.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Mono book yet, October 12, 2004

By 

Jack D. Herrington "engineer and author" (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cross-Platform .NET Development: Using Mono, Portable .NET, and Microsoft .NET (Hardcover)

I prefer this book to the Mono : Developers Notebook which was also recently published. This book provides a much wider angle view on the .NET cross platform development space. For example, the developers note book covers TK#, this book covers TK# and #WT.

This book is much more architectural in design than the Developers Notebook. So if code is your thing then you may want to evaluate both. I personally prefer architectural perspective because in this case it's more about choosing a direction of development as opposed to learning the structure of the TK# library, which is interesting, but can be gleaned from the online documentation.

This is a must have book for anyone who wants to take their .NET code beyond the confines of the Windows operating system. It's well worth the price of admission.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good on principles, shallow on cross-platform libraries., March 3, 2005

By 

Michael J. Ryan (theroughnecks.net) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Cross-Platform .NET Development: Using Mono, Portable .NET, and Microsoft .NET (Hardcover)

Okay, I got this book mostly to get into issues common to cross platform development. With focus on say, cross-platform gui libraries, and other cross-platform libraries.

In that I was a bit disappointed, but I was very happy to see how many somewhat advanced design principles were covered, and the breadth of this book. I am hoping that they expand into at least a companion book on maybe the Tao libraries, GTK#, wx.Net and other cross-platform libraries for front-end/interface coding.

I've also been reading the Nantz book for "Open Source .Net Development" and found it to be even more broad, and more shallow. Hopefully we will see some books that cover a bit more depth on fewer topics, and more specifically towards open-source cross platform libraries.

It is definately a good book, and covers a lot into the hows, and why's, but not so deep in any of the topics covered that you get a solid grasp on anything beyond design principles... This gives it a Four-Star rating in my book. It's worth a read for a mid-level developer looking to branch out into more serious development, or a development manager looking for better organization into development (cross platform or not). Don't expect to walk away comfortable on any of the tools that are mentioned in the book.