.\"
.\" mono manual page.
-.\" (C) 2003 Ximian, Inc.
-.\" (C) 2004-2005 Novell, Inc.
+.\" Copyright 2003 Ximian, Inc.
+.\" Copyright 2004-2011 Novell, Inc.
.\" Author:
.\" Miguel de Icaza (miguel@gnu.org)
.\"
-.TH Mono "Mono 1.0"
+.TH Mono "Mono 2.11"
.SH NAME
mono \- Mono's ECMA-CLI native code generator (Just-in-Time and Ahead-of-Time)
.SH SYNOPSIS
.PP
.B mono [options] file [arguments...]
+.PP
+.B mono-sgen [options] file [arguments...]
.SH DESCRIPTION
\fImono\fP is a runtime implementation of the ECMA Common Language
Infrastructure. This can be used to run ECMA and .NET applications.
The runtime provides a number of configuration options for running
applications, for developing and debugging, and for testing and
debugging the runtime itself.
+.PP
+The \fImono\fP command uses the Boehm conservative garbage collector
+while the \fImono-sgen\fP command uses a moving and generational
+garbage collector.
.SH PORTABILITY
On Unix-based systems, Mono provides a mechanism to emulate the
Windows-style file access, this includes providing a case insensitive
This instructs Mono to precompile code that has historically not been
precompiled with AOT.
.TP
+.I outfile=[filename]
+Instructs the AOT compiler to save the output to the specified file.
+.TP
.I write-symbols
Instructs the AOT compiler to emit debug symbol information.
.TP
+.I save-temps,keep-temps
+Instructs the AOT compiler to keep temporary files.
+.TP
+.I threads=[number]
+This is an experimental option for the AOT compiler to use multiple threads
+when compiling the methods.
+.TP
+.I nodebug
+Instructs the AOT compiler to not output any debugging information.
+.TP
+.I ntrampolines=[number]
+When compiling in full aot mode, the method trampolines must be precreated
+in the AOT image. You can add additional method trampolines with this argument.
+Defaults to 1024.
+.TP
+.I nrgctx-trampolines=[number]
+When compiling in full aot mode, the generic sharing trampolines must be precreated
+in the AOT image. You can add additional method trampolines with this argument.
+Defaults to 1024.
+.TP
+.I nimt-trampolines=[number]
+When compiling in full aot mode, the IMT trampolines must be precreated
+in the AOT image. You can add additional method trampolines with this argument.
+Defaults to 128.
+.TP
+.I print-skipped-methods
+If the AOT compiler cannot compile a method for any reason, enabling this flag
+will output the skipped methods to the console.
+.TP
+.I autoreg
+The AOT compiler will emit a (ELF only) library initializer to automatically
+register the aot compiled module with the runtime. This is only useful in static
+mode
+.TP
+.I asmonly
+Instructs the AOT compiler to output assembly code instead of an object file.
+.TP
+.I soft-debug
+This instructs the compiler to generate sequence point checks that
+allow Mono's soft debugger to debug applications even on systems where
+it is not possible to set breakpoints or to single step (certain
+hardware configurations like the cell phones and video gaming
+consoles).
+.TP
.I static
-Create an ELF object file (.o) which can be statically linked into an executable
-when embedding the mono runtime. When this option is used, the object file needs to
-be registered with the embedded runtime using the mono_aot_register_module function
-which takes as its argument the mono_aot_module_<ASSEMBLY NAME>_info global symbol
-from the object file:
+Create an ELF object file (.o) or .s file which can be statically linked into an
+executable when embedding the mono runtime. When this option is used, the object file
+needs to be registered with the embedded runtime using the mono_aot_register_module
+function which takes as its argument the mono_aot_module_<ASSEMBLY NAME>_info global
+symbol from the object file:
+.nf
extern void *mono_aot_module_hello_info;
mono_aot_register_module (mono_aot_module_hello_info);
-
+.fi
.ne
-.RE
-.Sp
+.TP
+.I mtriple=<TRIPLE>
+Use the GNU style target triple <TRIPLE> to determine some code generation options, i.e.
+--mtriple=armv7-linux-gnueabi will generate code that targets ARMv7. This is currently
+only supported by the ARM backend. In LLVM mode, this triple is passed on to the LLVM
+llc compiler.
+.TP
+.I tool-prefix=<PREFIX>
+Prepends <PREFIX> to the name of tools ran by the AOT compiler, i.e. 'as'/'ld'. For
+example, --tool=prefix=arm-linux-gnueabi- will make the AOT compiler run
+'arm-linux-gnueabi-as' instead of 'as'.
+.TP
+.I llvm-path=<PREFIX>
+Same for the llvm tools 'opt' and 'llc'.
+.TP
+.I stats
+Print various stats collected during AOT compilation.
+
+.PP
For more information about AOT, see: http://www.mono-project.com/AOT
+.RE
.TP
-\fB--full-aot\fR
-This is an experimental flag that instructs the Mono runtime to not
-generate any code at runtime and depend exclusively on the code
-generated from using mono --aot=full previously. This is useful for
-platforms that do not permit dynamic code generation.
-.Sp
-Notice that this feature will abort execution at runtime if a codepath
-in your program, or Mono's class libraries attempts to generate code
-dynamically. You should test your software upfront and make sure that
-you do not use any dynamic features.
+\fB--attach=[options]\fR
+Currently the only option supported by this command line argument is
+\fBdisable\fR which disables the attach functionality.
.TP
\fB--config filename\fR
Load the specified configuration file instead of the default one(s).
specified in the MONO_CONFIG environment variable, if set. See the
mono-config(5) man page for details on the format of this file.
.TP
+\fB--debugger-agent=[options]\fR
+This instructs the Mono runtime to
+start a debugging agent inside the Mono runtime and connect it to a
+client user interface will control the Mono process.
+This option is typically used by IDEs, like the MonoDevelop IDE.
+.PP
+The
+configuration is specified using one of more of the following options:
+.RS
+.ne 8
+.TP
+.I transport=transport_name
+.Sp
+This is used to specify the transport that the debugger will use to
+communicate. It must be specified and currently requires this to
+be 'dt_socket'.
+.TP
+.I address=host:port
+.Sp
+Use this option to specify the IP address where your debugger client is
+listening to.
+.TP
+.I loglevel=LEVEL
+.Sp
+Specifies the diagnostics log level for
+.TP
+.I logfile=filename
+.Sp
+Used to specify the file where the log will be stored, it defaults to
+standard output.
+.TP
+.I server=[y/n]
+Defaults to no, with the default option Mono will actively connect to the
+host/port configured with the \fBaddress\fR option. If you set it to 'y', it
+instructs the Mono runtime to start debugging in server mode, where Mono
+actively waits for the debugger front end to connect to the Mono process.
+Mono will print out to stdout the IP address and port where it is listening.
+.ne
+.RE
+.TP
\fB--desktop\fR
Configures the virtual machine to be better suited for desktop
applications. Currently this sets the GC system to avoid expanding
the heap as much as possible at the expense of slowing down garbage
collection a bit.
.TP
+\fB--full-aot\fR
+This is an experimental flag that instructs the Mono runtime to not
+generate any code at runtime and depend exclusively on the code
+generated from using mono --aot=full previously. This is useful for
+platforms that do not permit dynamic code generation.
+.Sp
+Notice that this feature will abort execution at runtime if a codepath
+in your program, or Mono's class libraries attempts to generate code
+dynamically. You should test your software upfront and make sure that
+you do not use any dynamic features.
+.TP
+\fB--gc=boehm\fR, \fB--gc=sgen\fR
+Selects the Garbage Collector engine for Mono to use, Boehm or SGen.
+Currently this merely ensures that you are running either the
+\fImono\fR or \fImono-sgen\fR commands. This flag can be set in the
+\fBMONO_ENV_OPTIONS\fR environment variable to force all of your child
+processes to use one particular kind of GC with the Mono runtime.
+.TP
\fB--help\fR, \fB-h\fR
Displays usage instructions.
.TP
+\fB--llvm\fR
+If the Mono runtime has been compiled with LLVM support (not available
+in all configurations), Mono will use the LLVM optimization and code
+generation engine to JIT or AOT compile.
+.Sp
+For more information, consult: http://www.mono-project.com/Mono_LLVM
+.TP
+\fB--nollvm\fR
+When using a Mono that has been compiled with LLVM support, it forces
+Mono to fallback to its JIT engine and not use the LLVM backend.
+.TP
\fB--optimize=MODE\fR, \fB-O=MODE\fR
MODE is a comma separated list of optimizations. They also allow
optimizations to be turned off by prefixing the optimization name with
not allow managed code to crash mono. The verification is not as
strict as ECMA 335 standard in order to stay compatible with the MS
runtime.
-.TP
+.PP
The security system acts on user code: code contained in mscorlib or
the global assembly cache is always trusted.
.ne
The following options are supported:
.TP
.I casts
-Produces a detailed error when throwing a InvalidCastException.
+Produces a detailed error when throwing a InvalidCastException. This
+option needs to be enabled as this generates more verbose code at
+execution time.
.TP
.I mdb-optimizations
Disable some JIT optimizations which are usually only disabled when
running inside the debugger. This can be helpful if you want to attach
to the running process with mdb.
+.TP
+.I gdb
+Generate and register debugging information with gdb. This is only supported on some
+platforms, and only when using gdb 7.0 or later.
.ne
.RE
.TP
and code coverage see the sections "PROFILING" and "CODE COVERAGE"
below.
.TP
+This option can be used multiple times, each time will load an
+additional profiler. This allows developers to use modules that
+extend the JIT through the Mono profiling interface.
+.TP
\fB--trace[=expression]\fR
Shows method names as they are invoked. By default all methods are
traced.
mono --trace=M:System.Console:WriteLine app.exe
+.fi
+Exceptions can also be traced, it will cause a stack trace to be
+printed every time an exception of the specified type is thrown.
+The exception type can be specified with or without the namespace,
+and to trace all exceptions, specify 'all' as the type name.
+.nf
+
+ mono --trace=E:System.Exception app.exe
+
.fi
As previously noted, various rules can be specified at once:
.nf
mono --trace=N:System.Xml
.fi
+.TP
+\fB--no-x86-stack-align\fR
+Don't align stack frames on the x86 architecture. By default, Mono
+aligns stack frames to 16 bytes on x86, so that local floating point
+and SIMD variables can be properly aligned. This option turns off the
+alignment, which usually saves one intruction per call, but might
+result in significantly lower floating point and SIMD performance.
+.TP
+\fB--jitmap\fR
+Generate a JIT method map in a /tmp/perf-PID.map file. This file is then
+used, for example, by the perf tool included in recent Linux kernels.
+Each line in the file has:
+.nf
+
+ HEXADDR HEXSIZE methodname
+
+.fi
+Currently this option is only supported on Linux.
.SH JIT MAINTAINER OPTIONS
The maintainer options are only used by those developing the runtime
itself, and not typically of interest to runtime users or developers.
Increases the verbosity level, each time it is listed, increases the
verbosity level to include more information (including, for example,
a disassembly of the native code produced, code selector info etc.).
+.SH ATTACH SUPPORT
+The Mono runtime allows external processes to attach to a running
+process and load assemblies into the running program. To attach to
+the process, a special protocol is implemented in the Mono.Management
+assembly.
+.PP
+With this support it is possible to load assemblies that have an entry
+point (they are created with -target:exe or -target:winexe) to be
+loaded and executed in the Mono process.
+.PP
+The code is loaded into the root domain, and it starts execution on
+the special runtime attach thread. The attached program should
+create its own threads and return after invocation.
+.PP
+This support allows for example debugging applications by having the
+csharp shell attach to running processes.
.SH PROFILING
The mono runtime includes a profiler that can be used to explore
various performance related problems in your application. The
be the preferred profiler to use (for better output use the full path
to the mono binary when running and make sure you have installed the
addr2line utility that comes from the binutils package).
-.SH LOGGING PROFILER
-.PP
-The
-.I logging profiler
-will eventually replace the default profiler as it is more complete
-and encompasses the functionality of all the other profilers for Mono.
-It supports the following execution modes:
-.IP
-.I Statistical:
-the program instruction pointer is periodically sampled (it works also with
-unmanaged functions). If call chains are requested, for each sample the
-profiler gets a partial stack trace (up to a desired depth) so that
-caller-callee information is available.
-.IP
-.I Instrumenting:
-each method enter and exit is logged with a timestamp; further processing of
-the data can show the methods that took the longer to execute, with complete
-accounting for callers and callees. However, this way of profiling is rather
-intrusive and slows down the application significantly.
-.IP
-.I Allocation:
-each allocation is logged.
-.IP
-.I Allocation summary:
-shows, for each collection, a summary of the heap contents broken down by
-class (for each class the number of allocated and released objects is
-given, together with their aggregated size in bytes).
-.IP
-.I Heap snapshot mode:
-dumps the whole heap contents at every collection (or at user specified
-collections). It is also possible to request a collection and snapshot dump
-with a signal.
-.PP
-Moreover, other events can be logged and analyzed, like jit time for each
-method, load and unload for assemblies, modules and and individual classes,
-and appdomain and thread creation and destruction.
-.PP
-Instead of reporting the collected
-information at the end of the execution of the program, this profiler logs
-all the events periodically into a file during program execution.
-To minimize the performance impact with multi-threaded applications,
-the logging uses per-thread buffers that are routinely saved to disk.
-.PP
-The output file contains compressed events, to process the data you should
-use tools like the "Mono.Profiler" tool provided on the Mono SVN
-repository.
-.PP
-This profiler is activated passing the \fB--profile=logging\fR option to
-the mono runtime, and is controlled attaching further options, like
-\fB--profile=logging:stat\fR for doing statistical profiling (multiple
-options are separated by commas).
-.PP
-As a quick primer, here are a few examples of the most common usage modes:
-.PP
-To write the resulting data to "mydata.mprof" (defaults to statistical
-profiling):
-.nf
-
- mono --profile=logging:o=mydata.mprof program.exe
-.fi
-.PP
-To perform statistical profiling, inspecting call chains up to depth 8:
-.nf
-
- mono --profile=logging:s=8 program.exe
-.fi
-.PP
-To profile allocations with caller method attribution:
-.nf
-
- mono --profile=logging:a,ts program.exe
-.fi
-.PP
-To profile garbage collection activity (collection time and objects freed
-at each collection):
-.nf
-
- mono --profile=logging:g,as program.exe
-.fi
-.PP
-Then you would need to invoke the decoder \fImprof-decoder(1)\fR
-on the output file to see the profiling results.
-.PP
-These are all the available oprions, organized by category:
-.PP
-\fBExecution profiling modes\fR
-.RS
-.ne 8
-.TP
-\fIstatistical\fR, \fIstat\fR or \fIs\fR
-Performs statistical profiling. This is a lightweight profiling
-mechanism and it has a much lower overhead than the \fIenter-leave\fR
-profiling as it works by sampling where the program is spending its
-time by using a timer.
-If specified with \fIs=<number>\fR, also inspect call chains up to level
-<number>.
-.TP
-\fIenter-leave\fR, \fIcalls\fR or \fIc\fR
-Measure the time spent inside each method call, this is done by
-logging the time when a method enters and when the method leaves.
-This can be a time consuming operation.
-.TP
-\fIjit\fR, \fIj\fR
-Collect information about time spent by the JIT engine compiling
-methods.
-.TP
-\fItrack-stack\fR, \fIts\fR
-Track the execution stack. By itself this option does nothing, but it
-enables more detailed reporting in other options (because the profiler
-will use the stack data).
-.ne
-.RE
-.PP
-\fBAllocation profiling modes\fR
-.RS
-.ne 8
-.TP
-\fIallocations\fR, \fIalloc\fR or \fIa\fR
-Collect information about each allocation (object class and size).
-If combined with the "ts" option, for each allocation the profiler will
-also show the responsible method (and also correctly dintinguish allocations
-performed during JIT time).
-These information are also available when combining the "a" and "c" options,
-but since "c" is much more intrusive "ts" should be preferred.
-.TP
-\fIallocations-summary\fR or \fIas\fR
-At each collection dump a summary
-of the heap contents (for each class, the number and collective size of all
-live and freed heap objects). This very lightweight compared to full heap
-snapshots.
-.TP
-\fIunreachable\fR, \fIfree\fR or \fIf\fR
-Performs a lightweight profile of the garbage collector. On each
-collection performed by the GC, the list of unreachable objects is
-recorded, and for each object the class and size is provided. This
-information can be used to compute the heap size broken down by class
-(combined with "a" can give the same information of "as", but the log
-file contains info about each individual object, while in "as" the
-processing is done directly at runtime and the log file contains only
-the summarized data broken down by class).
-.TP
-\fIgc\fR or \fIg\fR
-Measure the time spent in each collection, and also trace heap resizes.
-.TP
-\fIheap-shot\fR, \fIheap\fR or \fIh\fR
-Performs full heap profiling. In this case on each
-collection a full heap snapshot is recorded to disk.
-Inside the snapshots, each object reference is still represented so
-that it's possible to investigate who is responsible for keeping objects
-alive.
-.PP
-The actual production of heap snapshots could produce large log files,
-so it can be controlled in three ways:
-.TP
-\fIgc-dumps=N\fR, \fIgc-d=N\fR, \fIgcd=N\fR
-states the number of snapshots that must be dumped (since the application
-starts). Zero means no dumps at all, -1 means dump at all collections.
-.TP
-\fIgc-signal=<signal>\fR, \fIgc-s\fR or \fIgcs\fR
-(where <signal> is one of "SIGUSR1", "SIGUSR2", or "SIGPROF")
-specifies a signal that will immediately trigger a collection and a dump.
-.TP
-\fIgc-commands=FILE\fR, \fIgc-c=FILE\fR or \fIgcc=FILE\fR
-specify a "command file". The file must contain an integer value in ASCII
-form, and the profiler will stat it at every collection.
-If it has been modified it will interpret its contents as a \fIgcd=N\fR
-option value, and dump the required number of snapshots from that moment
-onwards.
-If the file is present at application startup it takes precedence over an
-eventual \fIgcd=N\fR option.
-.ne
-.RE
-.PP
-\fBProfiler activity control\fR
-.RS
-.ne 8
-.TP
-\fIoutput=FILE\fR, \fIout=FILE\fR or \fIo=FILE\fR
-Use this option to provide the output file name for the profile log.
-If this option is not specified, it will default to "<program-name>.mprof".
-.TP
-\fIoutput-suffix=SUFFIX\fR, \fIsuffix=SUFFIX\fR or \fIos=SUFFIX\fR: makes
-the output file name equals to "<program-name>-SUFFIX.mprof".
-.TP
-\fIstart-enabled\fR or \fIse\fR: start with the profiler active
-(which is the default).
-.TP
-\fIstart-disabled\fR or \fIsd\fR: start with the profiler inactive.
-.TP
-\fItoggle-signal=<SIGNAL>\fR or \fIts=<SIGNAL>\fR (where <SIGNAL>
-is one of SIGUSR1, SIGUSR2 or SIGPROF): Choose a signal that will be used to
-toggle the profiler activity on and off. This way you can decide to profile
-only portions of the applicatopn lifetime (for instance, you can decide to
-avoid profiling an initial setup phase using \fIsd\fR, and enable the
-profiler later delivering the signal to the application).
-.TP
-\fIforce-accurate-timer\fR (or \fIfac\fR): the profiler by default uses
-rtdsc to acquire timestamps for frequent events, but this can be imprecise;
-using this option you force the use of "gettimeofday" at every event, which
-is more accurate but much slower.
-.ne
-.RE
-.PP
-\fBInternal buffer sizes\fR
-.RS
-.ne 8
-.TP
-\fIper-thread-buffer-size=N\fR, \fItbs=N\fR
-Use to specify the number of events that a thread buffer
-can hold. When the thread buffer is full, a log block is
-written to disk.
-.Sp
-This defaults to tbs=10000.
-.TP
-\fIstatistical-thread-buffer-size=N\fR, \fIsbs=N\fR
-The number of statistical samples that
-are held in memory before they are dumped to disk (the system does
-double-buffering and the statistical samples are written by a helper
-thread, so the statistical profiler never stops and is able to profile
-the profiler itself).
-.Sp
-This defaults to sbs=10000.
-.TP
-\fIwrite-buffer-size\fR, \fIwbs\fR
-Specifies the size in bytes of the internal write buffers.
-.Sp
-This defaults to wbs=1024.
-.ne
-.RE
-.PP
-In its current state, this profiler can also perform heap analysis (like
-heap-shot), and the decoder is already able to read the data, however
-the user interface for this feature is experimental (the
-\fImprof-heap-viewer\fR tool in the mono-tools module).
-.PP
-Another known issue is that if the timer is not strictly monotonic (like
-rtdsc), differences between times can underflow (they are handled as
-unsigned integers) and weird numbers can show up in the logs.
-.PP
-Finally, it can happen that when exceptions are thrown the profiler temporarily
-loses track of the execution stack and misattributes the caller for a few
-allocations (and method execution time).
-.PP
-More explanations are provided here: "http://www.mono-project.com/LoggingProfiler".
-.SH EXTERNAL PROFILERS
-There are a number of external profilers that have been developed for
-Mono, we will update this section to contain the profilers.
-.PP
-The heap Shot profiler can track all live objects, and references to
-these objects, and includes a GUI tool, this is our recommended
-profiler.
-To install you must download the profiler
-from Mono's SVN:
-.nf
- svn co svn://svn.myrealbox.com/source/trunk/heap-shot
- cd heap-shot
- ./autogen
- make
- make install
-.fi
-.PP
-See the included documentation for details on using it.
-.PP
-The Live Type profiler shows at every GC iteration all of the live
-objects of a given type. To install you must download the profiler
-from Mono's SVN:
-.nf
- svn co svn://svn.myrealbox.com/source/trunk/heap-prof
- cd heap-prof
- ./autogen
- make
- make install
-.fi
-.PP
-To use the profiler, execute:
-.nf
- mono --profile=desc-heap program.exe
-.fi
-.PP
-The output of this profiler looks like this:
-.nf
- Checkpoint at 102 for heap-resize
- System.MonoType : 708
- System.Threading.Thread : 352
- System.String : 3230
- System.String[] : 104
- Gnome.ModuleInfo : 112
- System.Object[] : 160
- System.Collections.Hashtable : 96
- System.Int32[] : 212
- System.Collections.Hashtable+Slot[] : 296
- System.Globalization.CultureInfo : 108
- System.Globalization.NumberFormatInfo : 144
-.fi
-.PP
-The first line describes the iteration number for the GC, in this case
-checkpoint 102.
-.PP
-Then on each line the type is displayed as well as the number of bytes
-that are being consumed by live instances of this object.
-.PP
-The AOT profiler is used to feed back information to the AOT compiler
-about how to order code based on the access patterns for pages. To
-use it, use:
-.nf
- mono --profile=aot program.exe
-.fi
-The output of this profile can be fed back into Mono's AOT compiler to
-order the functions on the disk to produce precompiled images that
-have methods in sequential pages.
+.SH LOG PROFILER
+This is the most advanced profiler.
+.PP
+The Mono \f[I]log\f[] profiler can be used to collect a lot of
+information about a program running in the Mono runtime.
+This data can be used (both while the process is running and later)
+to do analyses of the program behaviour, determine resource usage,
+performance issues or even look for particular execution patterns.
+.PP
+This is accomplished by logging the events provided by the Mono
+runtime through the profiling interface and periodically writing
+them to a file which can be later inspected with the mprof-report(1)
+tool.
+.PP
+More information about how to use the log profiler is available on the
+mprof-report(1) page.
.SH CUSTOM PROFILERS
Mono provides a mechanism for loading other profiling modules which in
the form of shared libraries. These profiling modules can hook up to
.PP
A more powerful coverage tool is available in the module `monocov'.
See the monocov(1) man page for details.
-.SH DEBUGGING
+.SH DEBUGGING AIDS
+To debug managed applications, you can use the
+.B mdb
+command, a command line debugger.
+.PP
It is possible to obtain a stack trace of all the active threads in
Mono by sending the QUIT signal to Mono, you can do this from the
command line, like this:
and the application might crash or terminate at any given point
afterwards.
.PP
+The \fB--debug=casts\fR option can be used to get more detailed
+information for Invalid Cast operations, it will provide information
+about the types involved.
+.PP
You can use the MONO_LOG_LEVEL and MONO_LOG_MASK environment variables
to get verbose debugging output about the execution of your
application within Mono.
environment variable to limit the extent of the messages you get:
If set, the log mask is changed to the set value. Possible values are
"asm" (assembly loader), "type", "dll" (native library loader), "gc"
-(garbage collector), "cfg" (config file loader), "aot" (precompiler) and "all".
+(garbage collector), "cfg" (config file loader), "aot" (precompiler),
+"security" (e.g. Moonlight CoreCLR support) and "all".
The default value is "all". Changing the mask value allows you to display only
messages for a certain component. You can use multiple masks by comma
separating them. For example to see config file messages and assembly loader
Turns off the garbage collection in Mono. This should be only used
for debugging purposes
.TP
+\fBLVM_COUNT\fR
+When Mono is compiled with LLVM support, this instructs the runtime to
+stop using LLVM after the specified number of methods are JITed.
+This is a tool used in diagnostics to help isolate problems in the
+code generation backend. For example \fBLLVM_COUNT=10\fR would only
+compile 10 methods with LLVM and then switch to the Mono JIT engine.
+\fBLLVM_COUNT=0\fR would disable the LLVM engine altogether.
+.TP
\fBMONO_AOT_CACHE\fR
If set, this variable will instruct Mono to ahead-of-time compile new
assemblies on demand and store the result into a cache in
~/.mono/aot-cache.
.TP
+\fBMONO_ASPNET_INHIBIT_SETTINGSMAP\fR
+Mono contains a feature which allows modifying settings in the .config files shipped
+with Mono by using config section mappers. The mappers and the mapping rules are
+defined in the $prefix/etc/mono/2.0/settings.map file and, optionally, in the
+settings.map file found in the top-level directory of your ASP.NET application.
+Both files are read by System.Web on application startup, if they are found at the
+above locations. If you don't want the mapping to be performed you can set this
+variable in your environment before starting the application and no action will
+be taken.
+.TP
\fBMONO_CFG_DIR\fR
If set, this variable overrides the default system configuration directory
($PREFIX/etc). It's used to locate machine.config file.
($PREFIX/etc/mono/config). The --config command line options overrides the
environment variable.
.TP
-\fBMONO_DEBUG\fR
-If set, enables some features of the runtime useful for debugging.
-This variable should contain a comma separated list of debugging options.
-Currently, the following options are supported:
-.RS
-.ne 8
-.TP
-\fBbreak-on-unverified\fR
-If this variable is set, when the Mono VM runs into a verification
-problem, instead of throwing an exception it will break into the
-debugger. This is useful when debugging verifier problems
-.TP
-\fBcollect-pagefault-stats\fR
-Collects information about pagefaults. This is used internally to
-track the number of page faults produced to load metadata. To display
-this information you must use this option with "--stats" command line
-option.
-.TP
-\fBdont-free-domains\fR
-This is an Optimization for multi-AppDomain applications (most
-commonly ASP.NET applications). Due to internal limitations Mono,
-Mono by default does not use typed allocations on multi-appDomain
-applications as they could leak memory when a domain is unloaded.
-.Sp
-Although this is a fine default, for applications that use more than
-on AppDomain heavily (for example, ASP.NET applications) it is worth
-trading off the small leaks for the increased performance
-(additionally, since ASP.NET applications are not likely going to
-unload the application domains on production systems, it is worth
-using this feature).
-.TP
-\fBhandle-sigint\fR
-Captures the interrupt signal (Control-C) and displays a stack trace
-when pressed. Useful to find out where the program is executing at a
-given point. This only displays the stack trace of a single thread.
-.TP
-\fBkeep-delegates\fR
-This option will leak delegate trampolines that are no longer
-referenced as to present the user with more information about a
-delegate misuse. Basically a delegate instance might be created,
-passed to unmanaged code, and no references kept in managed code,
-which will garbage collect the code. With this option it is possible
-to track down the source of the problems.
-.TP
-\fBno-gdb-backtrace\fR
-This option will disable the GDB backtrace emitted by the runtime
-after a SIGSEGV or SIGABRT in unmanaged code.
-.ne
-.RE
+\fBMONO_CPU_ARCH\fR
+Override the automatic cpu detection mechanism. Currently used only on arm.
+The format of the value is as follows:
+.nf
+
+ "armvV [thumb]"
+
+.fi
+where V is the architecture number 4, 5, 6, 7 and the options can be currently be
+"thunb". Example:
+.nf
+
+ MONO_CPU_ARCH="armv4 thumb" mono ...
+
+.fi
.TP
\fBMONO_DISABLE_AIO\fR
If set, tells mono NOT to attempt using native asynchronous I/O services. In
members of System.Globalization.CompareInfo class. Collation is
enabled by default.
.TP
+\fBMONO_DISABLE_SHM\fR
+Unix only: If set, disables the shared memory files used for
+cross-process handles: process have only private handles. This means
+that process and thread handles are not available to other processes,
+and named mutexes, named events and named semaphores are not visible
+between processes.
+.Sp
+This is can also be enabled by default by passing the
+"--disable-shared-handles" option to configure.
+.Sp
+This is the default from mono 2.8 onwards.
+.TP
\fBMONO_EGD_SOCKET\fR
For platforms that do not otherwise have a way of obtaining random bytes
this can be set to the name of a file system socket on which an egd or
prngd daemon is listening.
.TP
+\fBMONO_ENABLE_SHM\fR
+Unix only: Enable support for cross-process handles. Cross-process
+handles are used to expose process handles, thread handles, named
+mutexes, named events and named semaphores across Unix processes.
+.TP
+\fBMONO_ENV_OPTIONS\fR
+This environment variable allows you to pass command line arguments to
+a Mono process through the environment. This is useful for example
+to force all of your Mono processes to use LLVM or SGEN without having
+to modify any launch scripts.
+.TP
\fBMONO_EVENTLOG_TYPE\fR
Sets the type of event log provider to use (for System.Diagnostics.EventLog).
.Sp
In general if you have problems with encodings in your filenames you
should use the "convmv" program.
.TP
+\fBMONO_GC_PARAMS\fR
+When using Mono with the SGen garbage collector this variable controls
+several parameters of the collector. The variable's value is a comma
+separated list of words.
+.RS
+.ne 8
+.TP
+\fBnursery-size=\fIsize\fR
+Sets the size of the nursery. The size is specified in bytes and must
+be a power of two. The suffixes `k', `m' and `g' can be used to
+specify kilo-, mega- and gigabytes, respectively. The nursery is the
+first generation (of two). A larger nursery will usually speed up the
+program but will obviously use more memory. The default nursery size
+4 MB.
+.TP
+\fBmajor=\fIcollector\fR
+Specifies which major collector to use. Options are `marksweep' for
+the Mark&Sweep collector, `marksweep-par' for parallel Mark&Sweep,
+`marksweep-fixed' for Mark&Sweep with a fixed heap,
+`marksweep-fixed-par' for parallel Mark&Sweep with a fixed heap and
+`copying' for the copying collector. The Mark&Sweep collector is the
+default.
+.TP
+\fBmajor-heap-size=\fIsize\fR
+Sets the size of the major heap (not including the large object space)
+for the fixed-heap Mark&Sweep collector (i.e. `marksweep-fixed' and
+`marksweep-fixed-par'). The size is in bytes, with optional suffixes
+`k', `m' and `g' to specify kilo-, mega- and gigabytes, respectively.
+The default is 512 megabytes.
+.TP
+\fBwbarrier=\fIwbarrier\fR
+Specifies which write barrier to use. Options are `cardtable' and
+`remset'. The card table barrier is faster but less precise, and only
+supported for the Mark&Sweep major collector on 32 bit platforms. The
+default is `cardtable' if it is supported, otherwise `remset'. The cardtable
+write barrier is faster and has a more stable and usually smaller
+memory footprint. If the program causes too much pinning during
+thread scan, it might be faster to enable remset.
+.TP
+\fBevacuation-threshold=\fIthreshold\fR
+Sets the evacuation threshold in percent. This option is only available
+on the Mark&Sweep major collectors. The value must be an
+integer in the range 0 to 100. The default is 66. If the sweep phase of
+the collection finds that the occupancy of a specific heap block type is
+less than this percentage, it will do a copying collection for that block
+type in the next major collection, thereby restoring occupancy to close
+to 100 percent. A value of 0 turns evacuation off.
+.TP
+\fB(no-)concurrent-sweep\fR
+Enables or disables concurrent sweep for the Mark&Sweep collector. If
+enabled, the sweep phase of the garbage collection is done in a thread
+concurrently with the application. Concurrent sweep is disabled by
+default.
+.TP
+\fBstack-mark=\fImark-mode\fR
+Specifies how application threads should be scanned. Options are
+`precise` and `conservative`. Precise marking allow the collector
+to know what values on stack are references and what are not.
+Conservative marking threats all values as potentially references
+and leave them untouched. Precise marking reduces floating garbage
+and can speed up nursery collection and allocation rate, it has
+the downside of requiring a significant extra memory per compiled
+method. The right option, unfortunately, requires experimentation.
+.ne
+.RE
+.TP
+\fBMONO_GC_DEBUG\fR
+When using Mono with the SGen garbage collector this environment
+variable can be used to turn on various debugging features of the
+collector. The value of this variable is a comma separated list of
+words.
+.RS
+.ne 8
+.TP
+\fInumber\fR
+Sets the debug level to the specified number.
+.TP
+\fBcollect-before-allocs\fR
+.TP
+\fBcheck-at-minor-collections\fR
+This performs a consistency check on minor collections and also clears
+the nursery at collection time, instead of the default, when buffers
+are allocated (clear-at-gc). The consistency check ensures that
+there are no major to minor references that are not on the remembered
+sets.
+.TP
+\fBxdomain-checks\fR
+Performs a check to make sure that no references are left to an
+unloaded AppDomain.
+.TP
+\fBclear-at-gc\fR
+This clears the nursery at GC time instead of doing it when the thread
+local allocation buffer (TLAB) is created. The default is to clear
+the nursery at TLAB creation time.
+.TP
+\fBconservative-stack-mark\fR
+Forces the GC to scan the stack conservatively, even if precise
+scanning is available.
+.TP
+\fBcheck-scan-starts\fR
+If set, does a plausibility check on the scan_starts before and after each collection
+.TP
+\fBheap-dump=\fIfile\fR
+Dumps the heap contents to the specified file. To visualize the
+information, use the mono-heapviz tool.
+.TP
+\fBbinary-protocol=\fIfile\fR
+Outputs the debugging output to the specified file. For this to
+work, Mono needs to be compiled with the BINARY_PROTOCOL define on
+sgen-gc.c. You can then use this command to explore the output
+.nf
+ sgen-grep-binprot 0x1234 0x5678 < file
+.fi
+.ne
+.RE
+.TP
\fBMONO_GAC_PREFIX\fR
Provides a prefix the runtime uses to look for Global Assembly Caches.
Directories are separated by the platform path separator (colons on
list of "drive" to strip drive letters, or "case" to do
case-insensitive file matching in every directory in a path. "all"
enables all rewriting methods. (Backslashes are always mapped to
-slashes if this variable is set to a valid option.)
+slashes if this variable is set to a valid option).
.fi
.Sp
For example, this would work from the shell:
.fi
If you are using mod_mono to host your web applications, you can use
the
-.B MonoSetEnv
-directive, like this:
+.B MonoIOMAP
+directive instead, like this:
.nf
- MonoSetEnv MONO_IOMAP=all
+ MonoIOMAP <appalias> all
.fi
+See mod_mono(8) for more details.
+
+Additionally. Mono includes a profiler module which allows one to track what
+adjustements to file paths IOMAP code needs to do. The tracking code reports
+the managed location (full stack trace) from which the IOMAP-ed call was made and,
+on process exit, the locations where all the IOMAP-ed strings were created in
+managed code. The latter report is only approximate as it is not always possible
+to estimate the actual location where the string was created. The code uses simple
+heuristics - it analyzes stack trace leading back to the string allocation location
+and ignores all the managed code which lives in assemblies installed in GAC as well as in the
+class libraries shipped with Mono (since they are assumed to be free of case-sensitivity
+issues). It then reports the first location in the user's code - in most cases this will be
+the place where the string is allocated or very close to the location. The reporting code
+is implemented as a custom profiler module (see the "PROFILING" section) and can be loaded
+in the following way:
+.fi
+.Sp
+.nf
+
+ mono --profile=iomap yourapplication.exe
+
+.fi
+Note, however, that Mono currently supports only one profiler module
+at a time.
+.TP
+\fBMONO_LLVM\fR
+When Mono is using the LLVM code generation backend you can use this
+environment variable to pass code generation options to the LLVM
+compiler.
.TP
\fBMONO_MANAGED_WATCHER\fR
If set to "disabled", System.IO.FileSystemWatcher will use a file watcher
Gamin, kevent under Unix systems and native API calls on Windows, falling
back to the managed implementation on error.
.TP
+\fBMONO_MESSAGING_PROVIDER\fR
+Mono supports a plugin model for its implementation of System.Messaging making
+it possible to support a variety of messaging implementations (e.g. AMQP, ActiveMQ).
+To specify which messaging implementation is to be used the evironement variable
+needs to be set to the full class name for the provider. E.g. to use the RabbitMQ based
+AMQP implementation the variable should be set to:
+
+.nf
+Mono.Messaging.RabbitMQ.RabbitMQMessagingProvider,Mono.Messaging.RabbitMQ
+.TP
\fBMONO_NO_SMP\fR
If set causes the mono process to be bound to a single processor. This may be
useful when debugging or working around race conditions.
.TP
+\fBMONO_NO_TLS\fR
+Disable inlining of thread local accesses. Try setting this if you get a segfault
+early on in the execution of mono.
+.TP
\fBMONO_PATH\fR
Provides a search path to the runtime where to look for library
files. This is a tool convenient for debugging applications, but
libraries side-by-side with the main executable.
.Sp
For a complete description of recommended practices for application
-deployment, see the
-http://www.mono-project.com/Guidelines:Application_Deployment page.
+deployment, see
+http://www.mono-project.com/Guidelines:Application_Deployment
.TP
\fBMONO_RTC\fR
Experimental RTC support in the statistical profiler: if the user has
MONO_RTC=4096 mono --profiler=default:stat program.exe
.fi
-.TP
-\fBMONO_NO_TLS\fR
-Disable inlining of thread local accesses. Try setting this if you get a segfault
-early on in the execution of mono.
.TP
\fBMONO_SHARED_DIR\fR
If set its the directory where the ".wapi" handle state is stored.
If set, extra checks are made during IO operations. Currently, this
includes only advisory locks around file writes.
.TP
-\fBMONO_DISABLE_SHM\fR
-If set, disables the shared memory files used for cross-process
-handles: process have only private handles. This means that process
-and thread handles are not available to other processes, and named
-mutexes, named events and named semaphores are not visible between
-processes.
-.Sp
-This is can also be enabled by default by passing the
-"--disable-shared-handles" option to configure.
-.TP
\fBMONO_THEME\fR
The name of the theme to be used by Windows.Forms. Available themes today
include "clearlooks", "nice" and "win32".
\fBMONO_THREADS_PER_CPU\fR
The maximum number of threads in the general threadpool will be
20 + (MONO_THREADS_PER_CPU * number of CPUs). The default value for this
-variable is 5.
+variable is 10.
.TP
\fBMONO_XMLSERIALIZER_THS\fR
Controls the threshold for the XmlSerializer to produce a custom
should start serializing. The default value is 50, which means that
the a custom serializer will be produced on the 50th use.
.TP
-\fBMONO_XMLSERIALIZER_DEBUG\fR
-Set this value to 1 to prevent the serializer from removing the
-temporary files that are created for fast serialization; This might
-be useful when debugging.
-.TP
-\fBMONO_ASPNET_INHIBIT_SETTINGSMAP\fR
-Mono contains a feature which allows modifying settings in the .config files shipped
-with Mono by using config section mappers. The mappers and the mapping rules are
-defined in the $prefix/etc/mono/2.0/settings.map file and, optionally, in the
-settings.map file found in the top-level directory of your ASP.NET application.
-Both files are read by System.Web on application startup, if they are found at the
-above locations. If you don't want the mapping to be performed you can set this
-variable in your environment before starting the application and no action will
-be taken.
+\fBMONO_X509_REVOCATION_MODE\fR
+Sets the revocation mode used when validating a X509 certificate chain (https,
+ftps, smtps...). The default is 'nocheck', which performs no revocation check
+at all. The other possible values are 'offline', which performs CRL check (not
+implemented yet) and 'online' which uses OCSP and CRL to verify the revocation
+status (not implemented yet).
.SH ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES FOR DEBUGGING
.TP
\fBMONO_ASPNET_NODELETE\fR
classes will not be removed. They will be kept in the user's temporary
directory.
.TP
+\fBMONO_DEBUG\fR
+If set, enables some features of the runtime useful for debugging.
+This variable should contain a comma separated list of debugging options.
+Currently, the following options are supported:
+.RS
+.ne 8
+.TP
+\fBbreak-on-unverified\fR
+If this variable is set, when the Mono VM runs into a verification
+problem, instead of throwing an exception it will break into the
+debugger. This is useful when debugging verifier problems
+.TP
+\fBcasts\fR
+This option can be used to get more detailed information from
+InvalidCast exceptions, it will provide information about the types
+involved.
+.TP
+\fBcollect-pagefault-stats\fR
+Collects information about pagefaults. This is used internally to
+track the number of page faults produced to load metadata. To display
+this information you must use this option with "--stats" command line
+option.
+.TP
+\fBdont-free-domains\fR
+This is an Optimization for multi-AppDomain applications (most
+commonly ASP.NET applications). Due to internal limitations Mono,
+Mono by default does not use typed allocations on multi-appDomain
+applications as they could leak memory when a domain is unloaded.
+.Sp
+Although this is a fine default, for applications that use more than
+on AppDomain heavily (for example, ASP.NET applications) it is worth
+trading off the small leaks for the increased performance
+(additionally, since ASP.NET applications are not likely going to
+unload the application domains on production systems, it is worth
+using this feature).
+.TP
+\fBdyn-runtime-invoke\fR
+Instructs the runtime to try to use a generic runtime-invoke wrapper
+instead of creating one invoke wrapper.
+.TP
+\fBgdb\fR
+Equivalent to setting the \fBMONO_XDEBUG\fR variable, this emits
+symbols into a shared library as the code is JITed that can be loaded
+into GDB to inspect symbols.
+.TP
+\fBgen-seq-points\fR
+Automatically generates sequence points where the
+IL stack is empty. These are places where the debugger can set a
+breakpoint.
+.TP
+\fBexplicit-null-checks\fR
+Makes the JIT generate an explicit NULL check on variable dereferences
+instead of depending on the operating system to raise a SIGSEGV or
+another form of trap event when an invalid memory location is
+accessed.
+.TP
+\fBhandle-sigint\fR
+Captures the interrupt signal (Control-C) and displays a stack trace
+when pressed. Useful to find out where the program is executing at a
+given point. This only displays the stack trace of a single thread.
+.TP
+\fBinit-stacks\FR
+Instructs the runtime to initialize the stack with
+some known values (0x2a on x86-64) at the start of a method to assist
+in debuggin the JIT engine.
+.TP
+\fBkeep-delegates\fR
+This option will leak delegate trampolines that are no longer
+referenced as to present the user with more information about a
+delegate misuse. Basically a delegate instance might be created,
+passed to unmanaged code, and no references kept in managed code,
+which will garbage collect the code. With this option it is possible
+to track down the source of the problems.
+.TP
+\fBreverse-pinvoke-exceptions
+This option will cause mono to abort with a descriptive message when
+during stack unwinding after an exception it reaches a native stack
+frame. This happens when a managed delegate is passed to native code,
+and the managed delegate throws an exception. Mono will normally try
+to unwind the stack to the first (managed) exception handler, and it
+will skip any native stack frames in the process. This leads to
+undefined behaviour (since mono doesn't know how to process native
+frames), leaks, and possibly crashes too.
+.TP
+\fBno-gdb-backtrace\fR
+This option will disable the GDB backtrace emitted by the runtime
+after a SIGSEGV or SIGABRT in unmanaged code.
+.TP
+\fBsuspend-on-sigsegv\fR
+This option will suspend the program when a native SIGSEGV is received.
+This is useful for debugging crashes which do not happen under gdb,
+since a live process contains more information than a core file.
+.ne
+.RE
+.TP
\fBMONO_LOG_LEVEL\fR
The logging level, possible values are `error', `critical', `warning',
`message', `info' and `debug'. See the DEBUGGING section for more
Controls the domain of the Mono runtime that logging will apply to.
If set, the log mask is changed to the set value. Possible values are
"asm" (assembly loader), "type", "dll" (native library loader), "gc"
-(garbage collector), "cfg" (config file loader), "aot" (precompiler) and "all".
+(garbage collector), "cfg" (config file loader), "aot" (precompiler),
+"security" (e.g. Moonlight CoreCLR support) and "all".
The default value is "all". Changing the mask value allows you to display only
messages for a certain component. You can use multiple masks by comma
separating them. For example to see config file messages and assembly loader
This throws an exception when a X11 error is encountered; by default a
message is displayed but execution continues
.TP
+\fBMONO_XMLSERIALIZER_DEBUG\fR
+Set this value to 1 to prevent the serializer from removing the
+temporary files that are created for fast serialization; This might
+be useful when debugging.
+.TP
\fBMONO_XSYNC\fR
This is used in the System.Windows.Forms implementation when running
with the X11 backend. This is used to debug problems in Windows.Forms
.Sp
Generic code sharing by default only applies to collections. The
Mono JIT by default turns this on.
+.TP
+\fBMONO_XDEBUG\fR
+When the the MONO_XDEBUG env var is set, debugging info for JITted
+code is emitted into a shared library, loadable into gdb. This enables,
+for example, to see managed frame names on gdb backtraces.
+.TP
+\fBMONO_VERBOSE_METHOD\fR
+Enables the maximum JIT verbosity for the specified method. This is
+very helpfull to diagnose a miscompilation problems of a specific
+method.
.SH VALGRIND
If you want to use Valgrind, you will find the file `mono.supp'
useful, it contains the suppressions for the GC which trigger
.nf
dtrace -P mono'$target' -l -c mono
.fi
+.SH PERMISSIONS
+Mono's Ping implementation for detecting network reachability can
+create the ICMP packets itself without requiring the system ping
+command to do the work. If you want to enable this on Linux for
+non-root users, you need to give the Mono binary special permissions.
+.PP
+As root, run this command:
+.nf
+ # setcap cap_net_raw=+ep /usr/bin/mono
+.fi
.SH FILES
On Unix assemblies are loaded from the installation lib directory. If you set
`prefix' to /usr, the assemblies will be located in /usr/lib. On
http://www.mono-project.com
.SH SEE ALSO
.PP
-certmgr(1), mcs(1), monocov(1), monodis(1), mono-config(5), mozroots(1), xsp(1).
+certmgr(1), csharp(1), mcs(1), mdb(1), monocov(1), monodis(1),
+mono-config(5), mozroots(1), mprof-report(1), pdb2mdb(1), xsp(1), mod_mono(8).
.PP
For more information on AOT:
http://www.mono-project.com/AOT
projects / mono.git / blobdiff