What is Mono? Mono is a software platform designed to allow developers to easily create cross platform applications.

It is an open source implementation of Microsoft's .Net Framework based on the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Runtime. The Components There are several components that make up Mono: C# Compiler - Mono's C# compiler is feature complete for C# 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 (ECMA). A good description of the feature of the various versions is available on Wikipedia. Mono Runtime - The runtime implements the ECMA Common Language Infrastructure (CLI). The runtime provides a Just-in-Time (JIT) compiler, an Ahead-of-Time compiler (AOT), a library loader, the garbage collector, a threading system and interoperability functionality. Base Class Library - The Mono platform provides a comprehensive set of classes that provide a solid foundation to build applications on. These classes are compatible with Microsoft's .Net Framework classes. Mono Class Library - Mono also provides many classes that go above and beyond the Base Class Library provided by Microsoft. These provide additional functionality that are useful, especially in building Linux applications. Some examples are classes for Gtk+, Zip files, LDAP, OpenGL, Cairo, POSIX, etc.

The Benefits There are many benefits to choosing Mono for application development: Popularity - Built on the success of .Net, there are millions of developers that have experience building applications in C#. Higher-Level Programming - All Mono languages benefit from many features of the runtime, like automatic memory management, reflection, generics, and threading. These features allow you to concentrate on writing your application instead of writing system infrastructure code. Base Class Library - Having a comprehensive class library provides thousands of built in classes to increase productivity. Cross Platform - Mono is built to be cross platform. Mono runs on Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, BSD, and Sun Solaris, Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation 3, Apple iPhone. It also runs on x86, x86-64, IA64, PowerPC, SPARC (32), ARM, Alpha, s390, s390x (32 and 64 bits) and more. Developing your application with Mono allows you to run on nearly any computer in existence. Common Language Runtime (CLR) - The CLR allows you to choose the programming language you like best to work with, and it can interoperate with code written in any other CLR language. For example, you can write a class in C#, inherit from it in VB.Net, and use it in Eiffel. You can choose to write code in Mono in a variety of programming languages.

What Is a Satellite Assembly?

A .NET Framework assembly contains resources specific to a given language. Using satellite assemblies, you can place the resources for different languages in different assemblies, and the correct assembly is loaded into memory only if the user elects to view the application in that language. This means that you develop your application in a default language and add flexibility to react with change in the locale. Say, for example, you developed your application in an en-US locale. Now, your application has multilingual support. When you deploy your code in, say, India, you want to show labels, messages shown in the national language which is other than English. Satellite assemblies give this flexibility. You create any simple text file with translated strings, create resources, and put them into the bin\debug folder. That's it. The next time, your code will read the CurrentCulture property of the current thread and accordingly load the appropriate resource. This is called the hub and spoke model.. The hub is the main assembly that contains the non localizable executable code and the resources for a single culture, called the neutral or default culture. Each spoke connects to a satellite assembly that contains the resources for a single culture, but does not contain any code. There are several advantages to this model:

You can incrementally add resources for new cultures after you have deployed an application. Because subsequent development of culture-specific resources can require a significant amount of time, this allows you to release your main application first, and deliver culture-specific resources at a later date. You can update and change an application's satellite assemblies without recompiling the application. An application needs to load only those satellite assemblies that contain the resources needed for a

particular culture. This can significantly reduce the use of system resources.