1 .de Sp \" Vertical space (when we can't use .PP)
5 .TH mcs 1 "6 January 2001"
7 mcs, gmcs, smcs \- Mono C# Compiler (1.0, 2.0, Moonlight)
10 [option] [source-files]
12 mcs is the Mono C# compiler, an implementation of the ECMA-334
13 language specification. You can pass one or more options to drive the
14 compiler, and a set of source files. Extra options or arguments can
15 be provided in a response file. Response files are referenced by
16 prepending the @ symbol to the response file name.
20 compiler is used to compile against the 1.x profile and implements
21 C# 1.0 and parts of C# 2.0 and C# 3.0 specification which do not depend
26 compiler is used to compile against the 2.0 profile and implements
27 the complete C# 3.0 specification.
31 compiler is used to compile against the Silverlight/Moonlight profile.
32 This profile is designed to be used for creating Silverlight/Moonlight
33 applications that will run on a web browser. The API exposed by this
34 profile is a small subset of the 3.5 API (even if it is commonly
35 referred as the 2.1 API, this API is a small subset of 2.0 with a few
38 See the section on packages for more information.
40 The Mono C# compiler accepts the same command line options that the
41 Microsoft C# compiler does. Those options can start with a slash or a
42 dash (/checked is the same as -checked). Additionally some GNU-like
43 options are supported, those begin with "--". All MCS-specific flags
44 which are not available in the Microsoft C# compiler are available
45 only with the GNU-style options.
47 C# source files must end with a ".cs" extension. Compilation of C#
48 source code requires all the files that make up a library, module or
49 executable to be provided on the command line. There is no support
50 for partial compilation. To achieve the benefits of partial
51 compilation, you should compile programs into their own assemblies,
52 and later reference them with the "-r" flag.
54 The Mono C# compiler generates images (.exe files) that contain CIL
55 byte code that can be executed by any system that implements a Common
56 Language Infrastructure virtual machine such as the Microsoft .NET
57 runtime engine on Windows or the Mono runtime engine on Unix systems.
58 Executables are not bound to a specific CPU or operating system.
60 The Mono C# compiler by default only references three assemblies:
61 mscorlib.dll, System.dll and System.Xml.dll. If you want to
62 reference extra libraries you must manually specify them using the
63 -pkg: command line option or the -r: command line option.
64 Alternatively if you want to get all of the System libraries, you can
65 use the -pkg:dotnet command line option.
70 Displays information about the Mono C# compiler
72 .I \-\-addmodule:MODULE1[,MODULE2]
73 Includes the specified modules in the resulting assembly. Modules are
74 created by calling the compiler with the -target:module option
76 .I -checked, -checked+
77 Sets the default compilation mode to `checked'. This makes all
78 the math operations checked (the default is unchecked).
81 Sets the default compilation mode to `unchecked'. This makes all
82 the math operations unchecked (this is the default).
84 .I -clscheck-, -clscheck+
85 Disables or enables the Common Language Specification (CLS) checks (it
86 is enabled by default).
88 The Common Language Specification (CLS) defines an interoperable
89 subset of types as well as conventions that compilers (CLS producers)
90 and developers must follow to expose code to other programming
91 languages (CLS consumers).
94 Specifies the code page used to process the input files from the
95 point it is specified on. By default files will be processed in the
96 environment-dependent native code page. The compiler will also automatically
97 detect Unicode files that have an embedded byte mark at the beginning.
99 Other popular encodings are 28591 (Latin1), 1252 (iso-8859-1) and 65001 (UTF-8).
101 MCS supports a couple of shorthands: "utf8" can be used to specify utf-8 instead
102 of using the cryptic 65001 and "reset" restores the automatic handling of
103 code pages. These shorthands are not available on the Microsoft compiler.
105 .I \-define:SYMLIST, -d:SYMLIST
106 Defines the symbol listed by the semi-colon separated list SYMLIST
107 SYMBOL. This can be tested in the source code by the pre-processor,
108 or can be used by methods that have been tagged with the Conditional
112 Generate debugging information. To obtain stack traces with debugging
113 information, you need to invoke the mono runtime with the `--debug'
114 flag. This debugging information is stored inside the assembly as a
118 Do not generate debugging information.
121 Only embed the strongname public key into the assembly. The actual
122 signing must be done in a later stage using the SN tool. This is useful
123 to protect the private key during development. Note that delay signing
124 can only be done using a strongname key file (not a key container). The
125 option is equivalent to including [assembly: AssemblyDelaySign (true)]
126 in your source code. Compiler option takes precedence over the
130 Default. Strongname (sign) the assembly using the strong name key file
131 (or container). The option is equivalent to including [assembly:
132 AssemblyDelaySign (false)] in your source code. Compiler option takes
133 precedence over the attributes.
136 Extracts the C#/XML documentation from the source code and stores in in
140 This flag is ignored by Mono's C# compiler and is present only to
141 allow MCS to be used as a CSC replacement for msbuild/xbuild.
144 This is used for debugging the compiler. This makes the error emission
145 generate an exception that can be caught by a debugger.
148 This flag is ignored by Mono's C# compiler and is present only to
149 allow MCS to be used as a CSC replacement for msbuild/xbuild.
152 Strongname (sign) the output assembly using the key pair present in
153 the specified strong name key file (snk). A full key pair is required
154 by default (or when using delaysign-). A file containing only the
155 public key can be used with delaysign+. The option is equivalent to
156 including [assembly: AssemblyKeyFile ("KEYFILE")] in your source code.
157 Compiler option takes precedence over the attributes.
159 .I \-keycontainer:CONTAINER
160 Strongname (sign) the output assembly using the key pair present in
161 the specified container. Note that delaysign+ is ignored when using
162 key containers. The option is equivalent to including [assembly:
163 AssemblyKeyName ("CONTAINER")] in your source code. Compiler option
164 takes precedence over the attributes.
166 .I \-langversion:TEXT
167 The option specifies the version of the language to use. The feature
168 set is different in each C# version. This switch can be used to force
169 the compiler to allow only a subset of the features.
170 The possible values are:
175 Instruct compiler to use the latest version. Equivalent is to omit the
176 switch (this currently defaults to the C# 3.0 language specification).
179 Restrict compiler to use only first ISO standardized features.
180 The usage of features such as generics, static classes, anonymous
181 methods will lead to error.
184 Restrict compiler to use only the second ISO standardized features.
185 This allows the use of generics, static classes, iterators and
186 anonymous methods for example.
188 Notice that this flag only controls the language features available to
189 the programmer, it does not control the kind of assemblies produced.
190 Programs compiled with mcs will reference the 1.1 APIs, Programs
191 compiled with gmcs reference the 2.0 APIs.
196 Each path specified in the comma-separated list will direct the
197 compiler to look for libraries in that specified path.
200 Directs the compiler to look for libraries in the specified path.
201 Multiple paths can be provided by using the option multiple times.
204 Tells the compiler which CLASS contains the entry point. Useful when
205 you are compiling several classes with a Main method.
207 .I \-nostdlib, -nostdlib+
208 Use this flag if you want to compile the core library. This makes the
209 compiler load its internal types from the assembly being compiled.
211 .I \-noconfig, \-noconfig+
212 Disables the default compiler configuration to be loaded. The
213 compiler by default has references to the system assemblies.
216 Makes the compiler ignore warnings specified in the comma-separated
219 .I -optimize, -optimize+, -optimize-
220 Controls whether to perform optimizations on the code. -optimize and
221 -optimize+ will turn on optimizations, -optimize- will turn it off.
222 The default in mcs is to optimize+.
224 .I -out:FNAME, -o FNAME
225 Names the output file to be generated.
228 Used for benchmarking. The compiler will only parse its input files.
230 .I \-pkg:package1[,packageN]
231 Reference assemblies for the given packages.
233 The compiler will invoke pkg-config --libs on the set of packages
234 specified on the command line to obtain libraries and directories to
237 This is typically used with third party components, like this:
240 $ mcs -pkg:gtk-sharp demo.cs
246 This will instruct the compiler to reference the System.* libraries
247 available on a typical dotnet framework installation, notice that this
248 does not include all of the Mono libraries, only the System.* ones. This
249 is a convenient shortcut for those porting code.
252 Use this to reference the "Olive" libraries (the 3.0 and 3.5 extended
256 References the assemblies for creating Moonlight/Silverlight
257 applications. This is automatically used when using the
259 compiler, but it is here when developers want to use it with the
263 .I \-pkg:silverdesktop
264 Use this option to create Moonlight/Silverlight applications that
265 target the desktop. This option allows developers to consume the
266 Silverlight APIs with the full 2.0 profile API available to them,
269 it gives full access to all the APIs that are part of Mono. The only
270 downside is that applications created with silverdesktop will not run
271 on the browser. Typically these applications will be launched
276 For more details see the PACKAGE section in this document
281 This flag is ignored by Mono's C# compiler and is present only to
282 allow MCS to be used as a CSC replacement for msbuild/xbuild.
284 .I -resource:RESOURCE[,ID]
285 Embeds to the given resource file. The optional ID can be used to
286 give a different name to the resource. If not specified, the resource
287 name will be the file name.
289 .I -linkresource:RESOURCE[,ID]
290 Links to the specified RESOURCE. The optional ID can be used to give
291 a name to the linked resource.
293 .I -r:ASSEMBLY1[,ASSEMBLY2], \-reference ASSEMBLY1[,ASSEMBLY2]
294 Reference the named assemblies. Use this to use classes from the named
295 assembly in your program. The assembly will be loaded from either the
296 system directory where all the assemblies live, or from the path
297 explicitly given with the -L option.
299 You can also use a semicolon to separate the assemblies instead of a
302 .I -reference:ALIAS=ASSEMBLY
303 Extern alias reference support for C#.
305 If you have different assemblies that provide the same types, the
306 extern alias support allows you to provide names that your software
307 can use to tell those appart. The types from ASSEMBLY will be
308 exposed as ALIAS, then on the C# source code, you need to do:
313 To bring it into your namespace. For example, to cope with two
314 graphics libraries that define "Graphics.Point", one in
315 "OpenGL.dll" and one in "Postscript.dll", you would invoke the
319 mcs -r:Postscript=Postscript.dll -r:OpenGL=OpenGL.dll
322 And in your source code, you would write:
325 extern alias Postscript;
329 // This is a Graphics.Point from Postscrip.dll
330 Postscript.Point p = new Postscript.Point ();
332 // This is a Graphics.Point from OpenGL.dll
333 OpenGL.Point p = new OpenGL.Point ();
337 .I \-recurse:PATTERN, --recurse PATTERN
338 Does recursive compilation using the specified pattern. In Unix the
339 shell will perform globbing, so you might want to use it like this:
342 $ mcs -recurse:'*.cs'
346 Starts up the compiler in interactive mode, providing a C# shell for
347 statements and expressions. A shortcut is to use the
352 Generates a stack trace at the time the error is reported, useful for
353 debugging the compiler.
355 .I \-target:KIND, \-t:KIND
356 Used to specify the desired target. The possible values are: exe
357 (plain executable), winexe (Windows.Forms executable), library
358 (component libraries) and module (partial library).
361 Another debugging flag. Used to display the times at various points
362 in the compilation process.
364 .I \-unsafe, -unsafe+
365 Enables compilation of unsafe code.
368 Debugging. Turns on verbose yacc parsing.
371 Shows the compiler version.
373 .I \-warnaserror, \-warnaserror+
374 All compilers warnings will be reported as errors.
376 .I \-warnaserror:W1,[Wn], -warnaserror+:W1,[Wn]
377 Treats one or more compiler warnings as errors.
379 .I \-warnaserror-:W1,[Wn]
380 Sets one or more compiler warnings to be always threated as warnings.
381 Becomes useful when used together with -warnaserror.
384 Sets the warning level. 0 is the lowest warning level, and 4 is the
385 highest. The default is 4.
388 Specifies a Win32 resource file (.res) to be bundled into the
392 Attaches the icon specified in FILE on the output into the resulting
396 Use this to stop option parsing, and allow option-looking parameters
397 to be passed on the command line.
399 .SH PACKAGES AND LIBRARIES
400 When referencing an assembly, if the name of the assembly is a path,
401 the compiler will try to load the assembly specified in the path. If
402 it does not, then the compiler will try loading the assembly from the
403 current directory, the compiler base directory and if the assembly is
404 not found in any of those places in the directories specified as
405 arguments to the -lib: command argument.
407 Depending on the invocation for the C# compiler (mcs, gmcs, or smcs)
408 you will get a default set of libraries and versions of those
409 libraries that are referenced.
411 The compiler uses the library path to locate libraries, and is able to
412 reference libraries from a particular package if that directory is
413 used. To simplify the use of packages, the C# compiler includes the
414 -pkg: command line option that is used to load specific collections of
417 Libraries visible to the compiler are stored relative to the
418 installation prefix under PREFIX/lib/mono/ called the PACKAGEBASE and the
419 defaults for mcs, gmcs and smcs are as follows:
422 References the PACKAGEBASE/1.0 directory
425 References the PACKAGEBASE/2.0 directory
428 References the PACKAGEBASE/2.1 directory
430 Those are the only runtime profiles that exist. Although other
431 directories exist (like 3.0 and 3.5) those are not really runtime
432 profiles, they are merely placeholders for extra libraries that build
433 on the 2.0 foundation.
435 Software providers will distribute software that is installed relative
436 to the PACKAGEBASE directory. This is integrated into the
438 tool that not only installs public assemblies into the Global Assembly
439 Cache (GAC) but also installs them into the PACKAGEBASE/PKG directory
440 (where PKG is the name passed to the -package flag to gacutil).
442 As a developer, if you want to consume the Gtk# libraries, you would
443 invoke the compiler like this:
446 $ mcs -pkg:gtk-sharp-2.0 main.cs
449 The -pkg: option instructs the compiler to fetch the definitions for
450 gtk-sharp-2.0 from pkg-config, this is equivalent to passing to the C#
451 compiler the output of:
454 $ pkg-config --libs gtk-sharp-2.0
457 Usually this merely references the libraries from PACKAGEBASE/PKG.
459 Although there are directory names for 3.0 and 3.5, that does not mean
460 that there are 3.0 and 3.5 compiler editions or profiles. Those are
461 merely new libraries that must be manually referenced either with the
462 proper -pkg: invocation, or by referencing the libraries directly.
469 defines have a special meaning to the compiler.
471 By default calls to methods and properties in the
472 System.Diagnostics.Trace class are not generated unless the TRACE
473 symbol is defined (either through a "#define TRACE") in your source
474 code, or by using the
478 By default calls to methods and properties in the
479 System.Diagnostics.Debug class are not generated unless the DEBUG
480 symbol is defined (either through a "#define DEBUG") in your source
481 code, or by using the
485 Note that the effect of defining TRACE and DEBUG is a global setting,
486 even if they are only defined in a single file.
488 .SH DEBUGGING SUPPORT
489 When using the "-debug" flag, MCS will generate a file with the
490 extension .mdb that contains the debugging information for the
491 generated assembly. This file is consumed by the Mono debugger (mdb).
492 .SH ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
495 If this variable is set, it contains a string in the form
496 "foreground,background" that specifies which color to use to display
497 errors on some terminals.
499 The background is optional and defaults to your terminal current
500 background. The possible colors for foreground are:
501 .B black, red, brightred, green, brightgreen, yellow, brightyellow,
502 blue, brightblue, magenta, brightmagenta, cyan, brightcyan, grey,
503 white and brightwhite.
505 The possible colors for background are: black, red, green, yellow,
506 blue, magenta, cyan, grey and white.
508 For example, you could set these variable from your shell:
511 MCS_COLORS=errors=brightwhite,red
514 You can disable the built-in color scheme by setting this variable to
517 During compilation the MCS compiler defines the __MonoCS__ symbol,
518 this can be used by pre-processor instructions to compile Mono C#
519 compiler specific code. Please note that this symbol is only to test
520 for the compiler, and is not useful to distinguish compilation or
521 deployment platforms.
523 The Mono C# Compiler was written by Miguel de Icaza, Ravi Pratap,
524 Martin Baulig, Marek Safar and Raja Harinath. The development was
525 funded by Ximian, Novell and Marek Safar.
528 The Mono Compiler Suite is released under the terms of the GNU GPL or
529 the MIT X11. Please read the accompanying `COPYING' file for details.
530 Alternative licensing for the compiler is available from Novell.
533 csharp(1), mdb(1), mono(1), mopen(1), mint(1), pkg-config(1),sn(1)
536 To report bugs in the compiler, you must file them on our bug tracking
538 http://www.mono-project.com/Bugs
540 The Mono Mailing lists are listed at http://www.mono-project.com/Mailing_Lists
542 The Mono C# compiler was developed by Novell, Inc
543 (http://www.novell.com, http) and is based on the
544 ECMA C# language standard available here:
545 http://www.ecma.ch/ecma1/STAND/ecma-334.htm
547 The home page for the Mono C# compiler is at http://www.mono-project.com/CSharp_Compiler
projects / mono.git / blob