3 .\" (C) 2003 Ximian, Inc.
4 .\" (C) 2004-2005 Novell, Inc.
6 .\" Miguel de Icaza (miguel@gnu.org)
8 .de Sp \" Vertical space (when we can't use .PP)
14 mono \- Mono's ECMA-CLI native code generator (Just-in-Time and Ahead-of-Time)
17 .B mono [options] file [arguments...]
19 \fImono\fP is a runtime implementation of the ECMA Common Language
20 Infrastructure. This can be used to run ECMA and .NET applications.
22 The runtime contains a native code generator that transforms the
23 Common Intermediate Language into native code.
25 The code generator can operate in two modes: just in time compilation
26 (JIT) or ahead of time compilation (AOT). Since code can be
27 dynamically loaded, the runtime environment and the JIT are always
28 present, even if code is compiled ahead of time.
30 The runtime loads ths specified
37 is an ECMA assembly. They typically have a .exe or .dll extension.
39 The runtime provides a number of configuration options for running
40 applications, for developping and debugging, and for testing and
41 debugging the runtime itself.
43 The following options are available:
46 This option is used to precompile the CIL code in the specified
47 assembly to native code. The generated code is stored in a file with
48 the extension .so. This file will be automatically picked up by the
49 runtime when the assembly is executed.
51 Ahead-of-Time compilation is most useful if you use it in combination
52 with the -O=all,-shared flag which enables all of the optimizations in
53 the code generator to be performed. Some of those optimizations are
54 not practical for Just-in-Time compilation since they might be very
57 Unlike the .NET Framework, Ahead-of-Time compilation will not generate
58 domain independent code: it generates the same code that the
59 Just-in-Time compiler would produce. Since most applications use a
60 single domain, this is fine. If you want to optimize the generated
61 code for use in multi-domain applications, consider using the
64 This pre-compiles the methods, but the original assembly is still
65 required to execute as this one contains the metadata and exception
66 information which is not availble on the generated file. When
67 precompiling code, you might want to compile with all optimizations
68 (-O=all). Pre-compiled code is position independent code.
70 Pre compilation is just a mechanism to reduce startup time, and avoid
71 just-in-time compilation costs. The original assembly must still be
72 present, as the metadata is contained there.
74 .I "--config filename"
75 Load the specified configuration file instead of the default one(s).
76 The default files are /etc/mono/config and ~/.mono/config or the file
77 specified in the MONO_CONFIG environment variable, if set. See the
78 mono-config(5) man page for details on the format of this file.
81 Configures the virtual machine to be better suited for desktop
82 applications. Currently this sets the GC system to avoid expanding
83 the heap as much as possible at the expense of slowing down garbage
87 Displays usage instructions.
89 .I "--optimize=MODE", "-O=mode"
90 MODE is a comma separated list of optimizations. They also allow
91 optimizations to be turned off by prefixing the optimization name with
94 The following optimizations are implemented:
96 all Turn on all optimizations
97 peephole Peephole postpass
98 branch Branch optimizations
99 inline Inline method calls
100 cfold Constant folding
101 consprop Constant propagation
102 copyprop Copy propagation
103 deadce Dead code elimination
104 linears Linear scan global reg allocation
105 cmov Conditional moves
106 shared Emit per-domain code
107 sched Instruction scheduling
108 intrins Intrinsic method implementations
109 tailc Tail recursion and tail calls
110 loop Loop related optimizations
111 fcmov Fast x86 FP compares
112 leaf Leaf procedures optimizations
113 aot Usage of Ahead Of Time compiled code
114 precomp Precompile all methods before executing Main
115 abcrem Array bound checks removal
116 ssapre SSA based Partial Redundancy Elimination
119 For example, to enable all the optimization but dead code
120 elimination and inlining, you can use:
122 -O=all,-deadce,-inline
126 Activate the security manager (experimental feature in 1.1). This allows
127 mono to support declarative security attributes (e.g. execution of, CAS
128 or non-CAS, security demands). The security manager is OFF by default
132 Configures the virtual machine to be better suited for server
136 Prints JIT version information.
139 .SH DEVELOPMENT OPTIONS
140 The following options are used to help when developing a JITed application.
143 Turns on the debugging mode in the runtime. If an assembly was
144 compiled with debugging information, it will produce line number
145 information for stack traces.
147 .I "--profile[=profiler[:profiler_args]]"
148 Turns on profiling. For more information about profiling applications
149 and code coverage see the sections "PROFILING" and "CODE COVERAGE"
152 .I "--trace[=expression]"
153 Shows method names as they are invoked. By default all methods are
156 The trace can be customized to include or exclude methods, classes or
157 assemblies. A trace expression is a comma separated list of targets,
158 each target can be prefixed with a minus sign to turn off a particular
159 target. The words `program' and `all' have special meaning.
160 `program' refers to the main program being executed, and `all' means
161 all the method calls.
163 Assemblies are specified by their name, for example, to trace all
164 calls in the System assembly, use:
167 mono --trace=System app.exe
170 Classes are specified with the T: prefix. For example, to trace all
171 calls to the System.String class, use:
174 mono --trace=T:System.String app.exe
177 And individual methods are referenced with the M: prefix, and the
178 standar method notation:
181 mono --trace=M:System.Console:WriteLine app.exe
184 As previously noted, various rules can be specified at once:
187 mono --trace=T:System.String,T:System.Random app.exe
190 You can exclude pieces, the next example traces calls to
191 System.String except for the System.String:Concat method.
194 mono --trace=T:System.String,-M:System.String:Concat
197 Finally, namespaces can be specified using the N: prefix:
200 mono --trace=N:System.Xml
203 .SH JIT MAINTAINER OPTIONS
204 The maintainer options are only used by those developing the runtime
205 itself, and not typically of interest to runtime users or developers.
208 Inserts a breakpoint before the method whose name is `method'
209 (namespace.class:methodname). Use `Main' as method name to insert a
210 breakpoint on the application's main method.
213 Inserts a breakpoint on exceptions. This allows you to debug your
214 application with a native debugger when an exception is thrown.
217 This compiles a method (namespace.name:methodname), this is used for
218 testing the compiler performance or to examine the output of the code
222 Compiles all the methods in an assembly. This is used to test the
223 compiler performance or to examine the output of the code generator
225 .I "--graph=TYPE METHOD"
226 This generates a postscript file with a graph with the details about
227 the specified method (namespace.name:methodname). This requires `dot'
228 and ghostview to be installed (it expects Ghostview to be called
231 The following graphs are available:
233 cfg Control Flow Graph (CFG)
235 code CFG showing code
236 ssa CFG showing code after SSA translation
237 optcode CFG showing code after IR optimizations
240 Some graphs will only be available if certain optimizations are turned
244 Instruct the runtime on the number of times that the method specified
245 by --compile (or all the methods if --compileall is used) to be
246 compiled. This is used for testing the code generator performance.
249 Displays information about the work done by the runtime during the
250 execution of an application.
253 Increases the verbosity level, each time it is listed, increases the
254 verbosity level to include more information (including, for example,
255 a disassembly of the native code produced, code selector info etc.).
257 The mono runtime includes a profiler that can be used to explore
258 various performance related problems in your application. The
259 profiler is activated by passing the --profile command line argument
260 to the Mono runtime, the format is:
263 --profile[=profiler[:profiler_args]]
266 Mono has a built-in profiler called 'default' (and is also the default
267 if no arguments are specified), but developers can write custom
268 profilers, see the section "CUSTOM PROFILERS" for more details.
272 is not specified, the default profiler is used.
276 is a profiler-specific string of options for the profiler itself.
278 The default profiler accepts the following options 'alloc' to profile
279 memory consumption by the application; 'time' to profile the time
280 spent on each routine and 'stat' to perform sample statistical
281 profiling. If no options are provided the default is 'alloc,time'.
286 mono --profile program.exe
290 That will run the program with the default profiler and will do time
291 and allocation profiling.
295 mono --profile=default:stat,alloc program.exe
298 Will do sample statistical profiling and allocation profiling on
301 There are a number of external profilers that have been developed for
302 Mono, we will update this section to contain the profilers.
304 The Live Type profiler shows at every GC iteration all of the live
305 objects of a given type. To install you must download the profiler
308 svn co svn://svn.myrealbox.com/source/trunk/heap-prof
315 To use the profiler, execute:
317 mono --profile=desc-heap program.exe
320 The output of this profiler looks like this:
322 Checkpoint at 102 for heap-resize
323 System.MonoType : 708
324 System.Threading.Thread : 352
326 System.String[] : 104
327 Gnome.ModuleInfo : 112
328 System.Object[] : 160
329 System.Collections.Hashtable : 96
331 System.Collections.Hashtable+Slot[] : 296
332 System.Globalization.CultureInfo : 108
333 System.Globalization.NumberFormatInfo : 144
336 The first line describes the iteration number for the GC, in this case
339 Then on each line the type is displayed as well as the number of bytes
340 that are being consumed by live instances of this object.
342 Mono provides a mechanism for loading other profiling modules which in
343 the form of shared libraries. These profiling modules can hook up to
344 various parts of the Mono runtime to gather information about the code
347 To use a third party profiler you must pass the name of the profiler
351 mono --profile=custom program.exe
355 In the above sample Mono will load the user defined profiler from the
356 shared library `mono-profiler-custom.so'. This profiler module must
357 be on your dynamic linker library path.
359 A list of other third party profilers is available from Mono's web
360 site (www.mono-project.com/Performance_Tips)
362 Custom profiles are written as shared libraries. The shared library
363 must be called `mono-profiler-NAME.so' where `NAME' is the name of
366 For a sample of how to write your own custom profiler look in the
367 Mono source tree for in the samples/profiler.c.
369 Mono ships with a code coverage module. This module is activated by
370 using the Mono --profile=cov option. The format is:
371 .I "--profile=cov[:assembly-name[/namespace]] test-suite.exe"
373 By default code coverage will default to all the assemblies loaded,
374 you can limit this by specifying the assembly name, for example to
375 perform code coverage in the routines of your program use, for example
376 the following command line limits the code coverage to routines in the
380 mono --profile=cov:demo demo.exe
386 does not include the extension.
388 You can further restrict the code coverage output by specifying a
392 mono --profile=cov:demo/My.Utilities demo.exe
396 Which will only perform code coverage in the given assembly and
399 Typical output looks like this:
402 Not covered: Class:.ctor ()
403 Not covered: Class:A ()
404 Not covered: Driver:.ctor ()
405 Not covered: Driver:method ()
406 Partial coverage: Driver:Main ()
411 The offsets displayed are IL offsets.
414 You can use the MONO_LOG_LEVEL and MONO_LOG_MASK environment variables
415 to get verbose debugging output about the execution of your
416 application within Mono.
420 environment variable if set, the logging level is changed to the set
421 value. Possible values are "error", "critical", "warning", "message",
422 "info", "debug". The default value is "error". Messages with a logging
423 level greater then or equal to the log level will be printed to
426 Use "info" to track the dynamic loading of assemblies.
431 environment variable to limit the extent of the messages you get:
432 If set, the log mask is changed to the set value. Possible values are
433 "asm" (assembly loader), "type", "dll" (native library loader), "gc"
434 (garbage collector), "cfg" (config file loader), "aot" (precompiler) and "all".
435 The default value is "all". Changing the mask value allows you to display only
436 messages for a certain component. You can use multiple masks by comma
437 separating them. For example to see config file messages and assembly loader
438 messages set you mask to "asm,cfg".
440 The following is a common use to track down problems with P/Invoke:
443 $ MONO_LOG_LEVEL="debug" MONO_LOG_MASK="dll" mono glue.exe
448 Mono's XML serialization engine by default will use a reflection-based
449 approach to serialize which might be slow for continous processing
450 (web service applications). The serialization engine will determine
451 when a class must use a hand-tuned serializer based on a few
452 parameters and if needed it will produce a customized C# serializer
453 for your types at runtime. This customized serializer then gets
454 dynamically loaded into your application.
456 You can control this with the MONO_XMLSERIALIZER_THS environment
459 The possible values are
461 to disable the use of a C# customized
462 serializer, or an integer that is the minimum number of uses before
463 the runtime will produce a custom serializer (0 will produce a
464 custom serializer on the first access, 50 will produce a serializer on
466 .SH ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
469 Turns off the garbage collection in Mono. This should be only used
470 for debugging purposes
473 If set, this variable will instruct Mono to ahead-of-time compile new
474 assemblies on demand and store the result into a cache in
477 .I "MONO_ASPNET_NODELETE"
478 If set to any value, temporary source files generated by ASP.NET support
479 classes will not be removed. They will be kept in the user's temporary
483 If set, this variable overrides the default system configuration directory
484 ($PREFIX/etc). It's used to locate machine.config file.
487 If set, this variable overrides the default runtime configuration file
488 ($PREFIX/etc/mono/config). The --config command line options overrides the
489 environment variable.
492 If set, enables some features of the runtime useful for debugging.
493 This variable should contain a comma separated list of debugging options.
494 Currently, the following options are supported:
498 .I "abort-on-sigsegv"
499 This option will make the runtime abort when it receives a SIGSEGV signal
500 while executing unmanaged (native) code. This is useful for debugging
501 problems when interfacing with native code.
502 .TP "collect-pagefault-stats"
503 Collects information about pagefaults. This is used internally to
504 track the number of page faults produced to load metadata. To display
505 this information you must use this option with "--stats" command line option.
507 Captures the interrupt signal (Control-C) and displays a stack trace
508 when pressed. Useful to find out where the program is executing at a
509 given point. This only displays the stack trace of a single thread.
512 This option will leak delegate trampolines that are no longer
513 referenced as to present the user with more information about a
514 delegate missuse. Basically a delegate instance might be created,
515 passed to unmanaged code, and no references kept in managed code,
516 which will garbage collect the code. With this option it is possible
517 to track down the source of the problems.
521 .I "MONO_DISABLE_AIO"
522 If set, tells mono NOT to attempt using native asynchronous I/O services. In
523 that case, a default select/poll implementation is used. Currently only epoll()
527 For platforms that do not otherwise have a way of obtaining random bytes
528 this can be set to the name of a file system socket on which an egd or
529 prngd daemon is listening.
531 .I "MONO_EXTERNAL_ENCODINGS"
532 If set, contains a colon-separated list of text encodings to try when
533 turning externally-generated text (e.g. command-line arguments or
534 filenames) into Unicode. The encoding names come from the list
535 provided by iconv, and the special case "default_locale" which refers
536 to the current locale's default encoding.
538 When reading externally-generated text strings UTF-8 is tried first,
539 and then this list is tried in order with the first successful
540 conversion ending the search. When writing external text (e.g. new
541 filenames or arguments to new processes) the first item in this list
542 is used, or UTF-8 if the environment variable is not set.
545 Provides a prefix the runtime uses to look for Global Assembly Caches.
546 Directories are separated by the platform path separator (colons on
547 unix). MONO_GAC_PREFIX should point to the top directory of a prefixed
548 install. Or to the directory provided in the gacutil /gacdir command. Example:
549 .B /home/username/.mono:/usr/local/mono/
552 The logging level, possible values are `error', `critical', `warning',
553 `message', `info' and `debug'. See the DEBUGGING section for more
557 Controls the domain of the Mono runtime that logging will apply to.
558 If set, the log mask is changed to the set value. Possible values are
559 "asm" (assembly loader), "type", "dll" (native library loader), "gc"
560 (garbage collector), "cfg" (config file loader), "aot" (precompiler) and "all".
561 The default value is "all". Changing the mask value allows you to display only
562 messages for a certain component. You can use multiple masks by comma
563 separating them. For example to see config file messages and assembly loader
564 messages set you mask to "asm,cfg".
566 .I "MONO_MANAGED_WATCHER"
567 If set to any value, System.IO.FileSystemWatcher will use the default
568 managed implementation (slow). If unset, mono will try to use FAM under
569 Unix systems and native API calls on Windows, falling back to the
570 managed implementation on error.
573 Provides a search path to the runtime where to look for library files.
574 Directories are separated by the platform path separator (colons on unix). Example:
575 .B /home/username/lib:/usr/local/mono/lib
578 Experimental RTC support in the statistical profiler: if the user has
579 the permission, more accurate statistics are gathered. The MONO_RTC
580 value must be restricted to what the linux rtc allows: power of two
581 from 64 to 8192 Hz. To enable higher frequencies like 4096 Hz, run as root:
584 echo 4096 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq
591 MONO_RTC=4096 mono --profiler=default:stat program.exe
596 Disable inlining of thread local accesses. Try setting this if you get a segfault
597 early on in the execution of mono.
600 If set its the directory where the ".wapi" handle state is stored.
601 This is the directory where the Windows I/O Emulation layer stores its
602 shared state data (files, events, mutexes, pipes). By default Mono
603 will store the ".wapi" directory in the users's home directory.
605 .I "MONO_THREADS_PER_CPU"
606 The maximum number of threads in the general threadpool will be
607 20 + (MONO_THREADS_PER_CPU * number of CPUs). The default value for this
611 Used for runtime tracing of method calls. The format of the comma separated
620 disabled Trace output off upon start.
623 You can toggle trace output on/off sending a SIGUSR2 signal to the program.
625 .I "MONO_TRACE_LISTENER"
626 If set, enables the System.Diagnostics.DefaultTraceListener, which will
627 print the output of the System.Diagnostics Trace and Debug classes.
628 It can be set to a filename, and to Console.Out or Console.Error to display
629 output to standard output or standard error, respectively. If it's set to
630 Console.Out or Console.Error you can append an optional prefix that will
631 be used when writing messages like this: Console.Error:MyProgramName.
632 See the System.Diagnostics.DefaultTraceListener documentation for more
635 .I "MONO_DISABLE_MANAGED_COLLATION"
636 If this environment variable is `yes', the runtime uses unmanaged
637 collation (which actually means no culture-sensitive collation). It
638 internally disables managed collation functionality invoked via the
639 members of System.Globalization.CompareInfo class. Collation is
642 .I "MONO_XMLSERIALIZER_THS"
643 Controls the threshold for the XmlSerializer to produce a custom
644 serializer for a given class instead of using the Reflection-based
645 interpreter. The possible values are `no' to disable the use of a
646 custom serializer or a number to indicate when the XmlSerializer
647 should start serializing. The default value is 50, which means that
648 the a custom serializer will be produced on the 50th use.
650 On Unix assemblies are loaded from the installation lib directory. If you set
651 `prefix' to /usr, the assemblies will be located in /usr/lib. On
652 Windows, the assemblies are loaded from the directory where mono and
657 The directory for the ahead-of-time compiler demand creation
658 assemblies are located.
660 /etc/mono/config, ~/.mono/config
662 Mono runtime configuration file. See the mono-config(5) manual page
663 for more information.
665 ~/.config/.mono/certs, /usr/share/.mono/certs
667 Contains Mono certificate stores for users / machine. See the certmgr(1)
668 manual page for more information on managing certificate stores.
670 ~/.config/.mono/keypairs, /usr/share/.mono/keypairs
672 Contains Mono cryptographic keypairs for users / machine. They can be
673 accessed by using a CspParameters object with DSACryptoServiceProvider
674 and RSACryptoServiceProvider classes.
676 ~/.config/.isolatedstorage, ~/.local/share/.isolatedstorage, /usr/share/.isolatedstorage
678 Contains Mono isolated storage for non-roaming users, roaming users and
679 local machine. Isolated storage can be accessed using the classes from
680 the System.IO.IsolatedStorage namespace.
682 Mailing lists are listed at the
683 http://www.mono-project.com/Mailing_Lists
685 http://www.mono-project.com
687 .BR mcs(1), mint(1), monodis(1), mono-config(5), certmgr(1).
689 For ASP.NET-related documentation, see the xsp(1) manual page
projects / mono.git / blob