+.de Sp \" Vertical space (when we can't use .PP)
+.if t .sp .5v
+.if n .sp
+..
.TH mcs 1 "6 January 2001"
.SH NAME
-mcs, gmcs \- Mono Compiler Suite.
+mcs \- Mono C# Compiler
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B mcs
[option] [source-files]
.PP
The
.I mcs
-compiler is used to compile against the 1.x profile and implements
-C# 1.0 and 2.0 with the exception of generics and nullable types. The
-.I gmcs
-compiler is used to compile against the 2.x profile and implements
-the complete C# 2.0 specification.
+compiler is used to compile against the latest Mono Base Class Library
+version and fully implements C# 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 specifications.
+.PP
+See the section on packages for more information.
.PP
-The Mono C# compiler accepts the same options than the Microsoft C#
-compiler does. Those options can start with a slash or a dash
-(/checked is the same as -checked). Additionally to this, the
-GNU-like options are supported, those begin with "--". All
-MCS-specific flags which are not available in the Microsoft C#
-compiler are available only with the GNU-style options.
+The Mono C# compiler accepts the same command line options that the
+Microsoft C# compiler does. Those options can start with a slash or a
+dash (/checked is the same as -checked). Additionally some GNU-like
+options are supported, those begin with "--". All MCS-specific flags
+which are not available in the Microsoft C# compiler are available
+only with the GNU-style options.
.PP
C# source files must end with a ".cs" extension. Compilation of C#
source code requires all the files that make up a library, module or
Displays information about the Mono C# compiler
.TP
.I \-\-addmodule:MODULE1[,MODULE2]
-Includes the specified modules in the resulting assembly.
+Includes the specified modules in the resulting assembly. Modules are
+created by calling the compiler with the -target:module option
.TP
.I -checked, -checked+
Sets the default compilation mode to `checked'. This makes all
Sets the default compilation mode to `unchecked'. This makes all
the math operations unchecked (this is the default).
.TP
+.I -clscheck-, -clscheck+
+Disables or enables the Common Language Specification (CLS) checks (it
+is enabled by default).
+.Sp
+The Common Language Specification (CLS) defines an interoperable
+subset of types as well as conventions that compilers (CLS producers)
+and developers must follow to expose code to other programming
+languages (CLS consumers).
+.TP
.I -codepage:ID
Specifies the code page used to process the input files from the
point it is specified on. By default files will be processed in the
-Latin-1 code page. The compiler will also automatically detect
-Unicode files that have an embedded byte mark at the beginning.
-.TP
+environment-dependent native code page. The compiler will also automatically
+detect Unicode files that have an embedded byte mark at the beginning.
+.Sp
Other popular encodings are 28591 (Latin1), 1252 (iso-8859-1) and 65001 (UTF-8).
-.TP
+.Sp
MCS supports a couple of shorthands: "utf8" can be used to specify utf-8 instead
of using the cryptic 65001 and "reset" restores the automatic handling of
code pages. These shorthands are not available on the Microsoft compiler.
.TP
.I \-define:SYMLIST, -d:SYMLIST
-Defines the symbol listed by the semi-colon separeted list SYMLIST
+Defines the symbol listed by the semi-colon separated list SYMLIST
SYMBOL. This can be tested in the source code by the pre-processor,
or can be used by methods that have been tagged with the Conditional
attribute.
.TP
-.I \-debug, \-debug+, \-g
+.I \-debug, \-debug+
Generate debugging information. To obtain stack traces with debugging
information, you need to invoke the mono runtime with the `--debug'
flag. This debugging information is stored inside the assembly as a
Extracts the C#/XML documentation from the source code and stores in in
the given FILE.
.TP
-.I \-\-expect-error X L
-The compiler will expect the code to generate an error
-named `X' in line `L'. This is only used by the test suite.
-.TP
+.I \-errorreport
+This flag is ignored by Mono's C# compiler and is present only to
+allow MCS to be used as a CSC replacement for msbuild/xbuild.
+.TP
.I \-\-fatal
This is used for debugging the compiler. This makes the error emission
generate an exception that can be caught by a debugger.
.TP
+.I \-filealign
+This flag is ignored by Mono's C# compiler and is present only to
+allow MCS to be used as a CSC replacement for msbuild/xbuild.
+.TP
+.I \-fullpaths
+Any source code error or warning issued by the compiler includes file
+name only by default. This option causes compiler to issue absolute file
+path instead.
+.TP
.I \-keyfile:KEYFILE
Strongname (sign) the output assembly using the key pair present in
the specified strong name key file (snk). A full key pair is required
set is different in each C# version. This switch can be used to force
the compiler to allow only a subset of the features.
The possible values are:
-.nf
-
-Default - Instruct compiler to use the latest version. Equivalent
-is to omit the switch.
-
-ISO-1 - Restrict compiler to use only ISO standardized features.
+.RS
+.ne 8
+.TP
+.I "Default"
+Instruct compiler to use the latest version. Equivalent is to omit the
+switch (this currently defaults to the C# 3.0 language specification).
+.TP
+.I "ISO-1"
+Restrict compiler to use only first ISO standardized features.
The usage of features such as generics, static classes, anonymous
methods will lead to error.
-.Sp
-Notice that this flag only controls the language features available to
-the programmer, it does not control the kind of assemblies produced.
-Programs compiled with mcs will reference the 1.1 APIs, Programs
-compiled with gmcs reference the 2.0 APIs.
+.TP
+.I "ISO-2"
+Restrict compiler to use only the second ISO standardized features.
+This allows the use of generics, static classes, iterators and
+anonymous methods for example.
+.TP
+.I "3"
+Restrict the compiler to use only the features available in C# 3.0
+(a superset of ISO-1 and ISO-2).
+.TP
+.I "future"
+Enables unstable features from upcoming versions of the language.
+.PP
+Notice that this flag only restricts the language features available to
+the programmer. A version of produced assemblies can be controled using
+.I SDK
+option.
+.ne
+.RE
.TP
.I -lib:PATHLIST
Each path specified in the comma-separated list will direct the
compiler by default has references to the system assemblies.
.TP
.I \-nowarn:WARNLIST
-Makes the compiler ignore warnings specified in the comma-separeted
+Makes the compiler ignore warnings specified in the comma-separated
list WARNLIST>
.TP
.I -optimize, -optimize+, -optimize-
Used for benchmarking. The compiler will only parse its input files.
.TP
.I \-pkg:package1[,packageN]
+Reference assemblies for the given packages.
+.Sp
The compiler will invoke pkg-config --libs on the set of packages
specified on the command line to obtain libraries and directories to
compile the code.
-.PP
+.Sp
This is typically used with third party components, like this:
.nf
+
$ mcs -pkg:gtk-sharp demo.cs
.fi
-.TP
+.RS
+.ne 8
.TP
.I \-pkg:dotnet
This will instruct the compiler to reference the System.* libraries
available on a typical dotnet framework installation, notice that this
-does not include all of the Mono libraies, only the System.* ones. This
+does not include all of the Mono libraries, only the System.* ones. This
is a convenient shortcut for those porting code.
.TP
+.I \-pkg:olive
+Use this to reference the "Olive" libraries (the 3.0 and 3.5 extended
+libraries).
+.TP
+.I \-pkg:silver
+References the assemblies for creating Moonlight/Silverlight
+applications.
+.TP
+.I \-pkg:silverdesktop
+Use this option to create Moonlight/Silverlight applications that
+target the desktop. This option allows developers to consume the
+Silverlight APIs with the full 2.0 profile API available to them,
+unlike
+.I smcs
+it gives full access to all the APIs that are part of Mono. The only
+downside is that applications created with silverdesktop will not run
+on the browser. Typically these applications will be launched
+with the
+.I mopen
+command line tool.
+.TP
+For more details see the PACKAGE section in this document
+.ne
+.RE
+.TP
+.I \-platform:ARCH
+Used to specify the target platform. The possible values are: anycpu,
+x86, x64 or itanium. As of June 2009, the Mono runtime only have support
+to emit anycpu and x86 assemblies.
+.TP
.I -resource:RESOURCE[,ID]
Embeds to the given resource file. The optional ID can be used to
give a different name to the resource. If not specified, the resource
Links to the specified RESOURCE. The optional ID can be used to give
a name to the linked resource.
.TP
-.I -r:ASSEMBLY1[,ASSEMBLY2], \-r ASSEMBLY1[,ASSEMBLY2]
+.I -r:ASSEMBLY1[,ASSEMBLY2], \-reference ASSEMBLY1[,ASSEMBLY2]
Reference the named assemblies. Use this to use classes from the named
assembly in your program. The assembly will be loaded from either the
system directory where all the assemblies live, or from the path
explicitly given with the -L option.
-.PP
+.Sp
You can also use a semicolon to separate the assemblies instead of a
comma.
.TP
+.I -reference:ALIAS=ASSEMBLY
+Extern alias reference support for C#.
+.Sp
+If you have different assemblies that provide the same types, the
+extern alias support allows you to provide names that your software
+can use to tell those appart. The types from ASSEMBLY will be
+exposed as ALIAS, then on the C# source code, you need to do:
+.Sp
+.nf
+ extern alias ALIAS;
+.fi
+To bring it into your namespace. For example, to cope with two
+graphics libraries that define "Graphics.Point", one in
+"OpenGL.dll" and one in "Postscript.dll", you would invoke the
+compiler like this:
+.Sp
+.nf
+ mcs -r:Postscript=Postscript.dll -r:OpenGL=OpenGL.dll
+.fi
+.Sp
+And in your source code, you would write:
+.Sp
+.nf
+ extern alias Postscript;
+ extern alias OpenGL;
+
+ class X {
+ // This is a Graphics.Point from Postscrip.dll
+ Postscript.Point p = new Postscript.Point ();
+
+ // This is a Graphics.Point from OpenGL.dll
+ OpenGL.Point p = new OpenGL.Point ();
+ }
+.fi
+.TP
.I \-recurse:PATTERN, --recurse PATTERN
Does recursive compilation using the specified pattern. In Unix the
-shell will perform globbing, so you migth want to use it like this:
+shell will perform globbing, so you might want to use it like this:
.PP
.nf
$ mcs -recurse:'*.cs'
.fi
.TP
+.I \-sdk:VERSION
+Used to specify the version of Base Class Library assemblies used for
+compilation. Following predefined values are valid: 2, 4 (default) as
+well as any custom value. The predefined version number means which
+.NET version should the produced assembly be compatible with. When
+custom value is specified mcs will try to find Base Class Libraries
+in the mono installed location PREFIX/lib/mono/<value>.
+.TP
+.I \-\-shell
+Starts up the compiler in interactive mode, providing a C# shell for
+statements and expressions. A shortcut is to use the
+.I csharp
+command directly.
+.TP
.I \-\-stacktrace
Generates a stack trace at the time the error is reported, useful for
debugging the compiler.
.I \-v
Debugging. Turns on verbose yacc parsing.
.TP
-.I \-v2
-Turns on C# 2.0 language features.
-.TP
.I \-\-version
Shows the compiler version.
.TP
.I \-warnaserror, \-warnaserror+
-Treat warnings as errors.
+All compilers warnings will be reported as errors.
+.TP
+.I \-warnaserror:W1,[Wn], -warnaserror+:W1,[Wn]
+Treats one or more compiler warnings as errors.
+.TP
+.I \-warnaserror-:W1,[Wn]
+Sets one or more compiler warnings to be always threated as warnings.
+Becomes useful when used together with -warnaserror.
.TP
.I \-warn:LEVEL
Sets the warning level. 0 is the lowest warning level, and 4 is the
-highest. The default is 2.
+highest. The default is 4.
.TP
.I \-win32res:FILE
Specifies a Win32 resource file (.res) to be bundled into the
Use this to stop option parsing, and allow option-looking parameters
to be passed on the command line.
.PP
+.SH PACKAGES AND LIBRARIES
+When referencing an assembly, if the name of the assembly is a path,
+the compiler will try to load the assembly specified in the path. If
+it does not, then the compiler will try loading the assembly from the
+current directory, the compiler base directory and if the assembly is
+not found in any of those places in the directories specified as
+arguments to the -lib: command argument.
+.PP
+The compiler uses the library path to locate libraries, and is able to
+reference libraries from a particular package if that directory is
+used. To simplify the use of packages, the C# compiler includes the
+-pkg: command line option that is used to load specific collections of
+libraries.
+.PP
+Libraries visible to the compiler are stored relative to the
+installation prefix under PREFIX/lib/mono/ called the PACKAGEBASE and the
+defaults for mcs, gmcs and smcs are as follows:
+.TP
+.I mcs
+References the PACKAGEBASE/1.0 directory
+.TP
+.I gmcs
+References the PACKAGEBASE/2.0 directory
+.TP
+.I smcs
+References the PACKAGEBASE/2.1 directory
+.PP
+Those are the only runtime profiles that exist. Although other
+directories exist (like 3.0 and 3.5) those are not really runtime
+profiles, they are merely placeholders for extra libraries that build
+on the 2.0 foundation.
+.PP
+Software providers will distribute software that is installed relative
+to the PACKAGEBASE directory. This is integrated into the
+.I gacutil
+tool that not only installs public assemblies into the Global Assembly
+Cache (GAC) but also installs them into the PACKAGEBASE/PKG directory
+(where PKG is the name passed to the -package flag to gacutil).
+.PP
+As a developer, if you want to consume the Gtk# libraries, you would
+invoke the compiler like this:
+.nf
+
+ $ mcs -pkg:gtk-sharp-2.0 main.cs
+
+.fi
+The -pkg: option instructs the compiler to fetch the definitions for
+gtk-sharp-2.0 from pkg-config, this is equivalent to passing to the C#
+compiler the output of:
+.nf
+
+ $ pkg-config --libs gtk-sharp-2.0
+
+.fi
+Usually this merely references the libraries from PACKAGEBASE/PKG.
+.PP
+Although there are directory names for 3.0 and 3.5, that does not mean
+that there are 3.0 and 3.5 compiler editions or profiles. Those are
+merely new libraries that must be manually referenced either with the
+proper -pkg: invocation, or by referencing the libraries directly.
+.PP
.SH SPECIAL DEFINES
The
.B TRACE
even if they are only defined in a single file.
.PP
.SH DEBUGGING SUPPORT
-When use the "--debug" or "-g" flag, MCS will create an assembler file
-FILE-debug.s containing debugging information where FILE is the name of
-the generated assembly. You need to run this file through the assembler
-to get a object file FILE-debug.o. See mono's "--dwarf-plus" argument
-for details on how to use this file.
+When using the "-debug" flag, MCS will generate a file with the
+extension .mdb that contains the debugging information for the
+generated assembly. This file is consumed by the Mono debugger (mdb).
+.SH ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
+.TP
+.I "MCS_COLORS"
+If this variable is set, it contains a string in the form
+"foreground,background" that specifies which color to use to display
+errors on some terminals.
+.Sp
+The background is optional and defaults to your terminal current
+background. The possible colors for foreground are:
+.B black, red, brightred, green, brightgreen, yellow, brightyellow,
+blue, brightblue, magenta, brightmagenta, cyan, brightcyan, grey,
+white and brightwhite.
+.Sp
+The possible colors for background are: black, red, green, yellow,
+blue, magenta, cyan, grey and white.
+.Sp
+For example, you could set these variable from your shell:
+.nf
+ export MCS_COLORS
+ MCS_COLORS=errors=brightwhite,red
+.fi
+.Sp
+You can disable the built-in color scheme by setting this variable to
+"disable".
.SH NOTES
During compilation the MCS compiler defines the __MonoCS__ symbol,
this can be used by pre-processor instructions to compile Mono C#
compiler specific code. Please note that this symbol is only to test
for the compiler, and is not useful to distinguish compilation or
-deployment platforms.
+deployment platforms.
.SH AUTHORS
-The Mono C# Compiler was written by Miguel de Icaza, Ravi Pratap and
-Martin Baulig at Ximian.
+The Mono C# Compiler was written by Miguel de Icaza, Ravi Pratap,
+Martin Baulig, Marek Safar and Raja Harinath. The development was
+funded by Ximian, Novell and Marek Safar.
.PP
.SH LICENSE
-The Mono Compiler Suite is released under the terms of the GNU GPL.
-Please read the accompanying `COPYING' file for details. Alternative
-licenses are available from Ximian.
+The Mono Compiler Suite is released under the terms of the GNU GPL or
+the MIT X11. Please read the accompanying `COPYING' file for details.
+Alternative licensing for the compiler is available from Novell.
.PP
.SH SEE ALSO
-mono(1), mint(1), sn(1)
+csharp(1), mdb(1), mono(1), mopen(1), pkg-config(1), sn(1)
.PP
.SH BUGS
-To report bugs in the compiler, you can use `bug-buddy', or you can
-file bug reports in our bug tracking system:
-http://bugzilla.ximian.com.
+To report bugs in the compiler, you must file them on our bug tracking
+system, at:
+http://www.mono-project.com/Bugs
.SH MAILING LIST
-The Mono Mailing List is available at: mono-list-request@ximian.com
+The Mono Mailing lists are listed at http://www.mono-project.com/Mailing_Lists
.SH MORE INFORMATION
-The Mono C# compiler is developed by Ximian, Inc
-(http://www.ximian.com) (http://www.ximian.com) and is based on the
+The Mono C# compiler was developed by Novell, Inc
+(http://www.novell.com, http) and is based on the
ECMA C# language standard available here:
http://www.ecma.ch/ecma1/STAND/ecma-334.htm
-
-
+.PP
+The home page for the Mono C# compiler is at http://www.mono-project.com/CSharp_Compiler
projects / mono.git / blobdiff