.TH mcs 1 "6 January 2001"
.SH NAME
-mcs, gmcs \- Mono C# Compiler (1.0 and 2.0)
+mcs, gmcs, smcs \- Mono C# Compiler (1.0, 2.0, Moonlight)
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B mcs
[option] [source-files]
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
+C# 1.0 and 2.0 with the exception of generics and nullable types.
+.PP
+The
.I gmcs
-compiler is used to compile against the 2.x profile and implements
+compiler is used to compile against the 2.0 profile and implements
the complete C# 2.0 specification including generics.
.PP
+The
+.I smcs
+compiler is used to compile against the Silverlight/Moonlight profile.
+This profile is designed to be used for creating Silverlight/Moonlight
+applications that will run on a web browser. The API exposed by this
+profile is a small subset of the 3.5 API (even if it is commonly
+referred as the 2.1 API, this API is a small subset of 2.0 with a few
+extensions), in addition this profile by default runs with
+-langversion:linq which turns on the C# 3.0 language by default.
+.PP
+See the section on packages for more information.
+.PP
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
.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.
+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).
.Sp
switch (this currently defaults to the C# 2.0 language specification).
.TP
.I "ISO-1"
-Restrict compiler to use only ISO standardized features.
+Restrict compiler to use only first ISO standardized features.
The usage of features such as generics, static classes, anonymous
methods will lead to error.
.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 "linq"
This enables the C# 3.0 support. Only a few features of C# 3.0 have
been implemented in the Mono C# compiler, so not everything is
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.
.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
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. This is automatically used when using the
+.I smcs
+compiler, but it is here when developers want to use it with the
+.I gmcs
+compiler.
+.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 -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
Use this to stop option parsing, and allow option-looking parameters
to be passed on the command line.
.PP
+.SH PACKAGES
+Depending on the invocation for the C# compiler (mcs, gmcs, or smcs)
+you will get a default set of libraries and versions of those
+libraries that are referenced.
+.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,
Martin Baulig, Marek Safar and Raja Harinath. The development was
licensing for the compiler is available from Novell.
.PP
.SH SEE ALSO
-mono(1), mint(1), sn(1)
+mdb(1), mono(1), mopen(1), mint(1), sn(1)
.PP
.SH BUGS
To report bugs in the compiler, you must file them on our bug tracking
projects / mono.git / blobdiff