MonoDevelop 2.4 released

Six months after the arrival of version 2.2, the MonoDevelop developers have released version 2.4 of their open source Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for programming in C# and other .NET languages. The major update to MonoDevelop includes a number of new features and improvements over the previous 2.2 release.

Version 2.4 of the MonoDevelop IDE features better pad organisation, now auto-hiding pads like the Error List, logs for Version Control or Find in Files operations, and several user interface (UI) improvements, such as a darker background with shading effects, the toolbars have been integrated into the docking system and five levels of compactness for the GUI. According to a blog post by project leader Miguel de Icaza, MonoDevelop 2.4 supports Gtk#, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight, MonoMac and MonoTouch deployments from the same IDE.

Improvements have been made related to source editing, the debugger and add-ins. Other changes include new Project/File and Navigate To dialogues, support for WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) Web References and references that require authentication, T4 macro processing and updates to the Mac OS X port. The next release of MonoDevelop will reportedly feature Git support using GitSharp, Mono on Android support (debugging, templates, deployment) and templates and support for MVC2.

With previous releases, in March and December of last year, both Mono and MonoDevelop updates were released at the same time. However, de Icaza says that the next major release of Mono – the open source alternative to Microsoft's .NET framework – is "still a few months away".

More details about the MonoDevelop update, including detailed screen shots, can be found in the official release announcement and on the What's new in MonoDevelop 2.4 page. Mono programs run under Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and various Unix derivatives without requiring modification of the binary code. Pre-compiled binary install packages are available to download from the Mono website, as is the source code. MonoDevelop is licensed under the LGPLv2 and MIT-X11 licenses.

See also:

• MonoTouch 2.0 adds iPad support, a report from The H.
• MonoDevelop support for MeeGo, a report from The H.
• Health Check: Mono, a feature from The H.

(crve)