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Monodevelop is kinda weak. Can we fix it together?

Discussion in 'Scripting' started by aaronflippo, Nov 28, 2012.

  1. aaronflippo

    aaronflippo

    Joined:
    Jun 7, 2012
    Posts:
    45
    Guys I just learned today that MonoDevelop is in github:

    https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/monodevelop

    I wonder if we can contribute some fixes?

    For instance:
    • For me as a Mac user, by far the biggest issue is that MD seems to freeze for like 10 seconds at a time - I think it's trying to find symbols. I can turn that feature off, but I like autocomplete!
    • I've also been getting lots of random errors when I attach to the debugger related to the VM, etc.
    • When I do "attach to process" I see a list of like 10 "(null) Mono" instances and it grows as I work. Is this a bug in MD or somewhere else?
    • Intellisense is often really broken, ignoring local symbols, etc.
    • Why are warnings listed before errors?
    • The UX for jumping to errors is fairly horrendous. Why does it just show the error for 2 seconds?
    • Resizing the MD window is incredibly buggy (Mac)


    I invited Tak (who I think is the holder of the keys for this project) to chime in here.

    How can we help? Is there a list of known issues we can easily find?
    Maybe someone could contribute an updated version from the latest Monodevelop trunk as it looks like it might address some of this stuff?

    Maybe together we can help make this tool awesome.
     
  2. pivotraze

    pivotraze

    Joined:
    Feb 4, 2012
    Posts:
    593
    It would just be easier if Unity would upgrade to MonoDevelop 3. It would fix most of the issues we currently have, all they would have to do is change the code to make it like the current 2.6 monodevelop. However... they could just develop plugins so maintaining the change between MonoDevelop versions woud be very little, if any.
     
  3. aaronflippo

    aaronflippo

    Joined:
    Jun 7, 2012
    Posts:
    45
    Yeah if that's the solution, cool. Maybe it's something we can help with if it's not on Unity's radar for the immediate future?
     
  4. mhutch

    mhutch

    Joined:
    Apr 8, 2010
    Posts:
    6
    FWIW, you could take a look at Unity's Debugger and Boo/UnityScript MonoDevelop addins and try porting them to MonoDevelop 3.x. You could even publish them on the MonoDevelop addin repository so they'd be easy to install from the addin manager in MonoDevelop 3.x.

    Making MonoDevelop 3.x usable for Unity users would be fantastic. Pretty much all the serious annoyances in MonoDevelop have been fixed in MD 3.x - almost all of the complaints about MonoDevelop I see these days on the web and Twitter are from Unity users. MonoDevelop 3.0.5 (current stable release) is over year newer than MonoDevelop 2.8.2 (which Unity ships), and has well over a thousand bugfixes, performance fixes and other improvements.

    The problem is, Unity's version of MonoDevelop 2.8.2 is not just an old version of MonoDevelop, it's a fork - it has many additional commits that have not been contributed upstream. From a quick skim, it looks like some of the patches are Unity specific tweaks, some are fixes for bugs that are already fixed in MD 3.x, and some are fixes for bugs that were not reported upstream. The bugfixes would have to be evaluated and contributed upstream (maybe they could make it into MD 3.0.6) and the Unity-specific tweaks would have to be moved into the Unity addin.

    If you have any questions I'd suggest trying the MonoDevelop development mailing list or IRC (#monodevelop on irc.gimp.org).
     
  5. Draco18s

    Draco18s

    Joined:
    Aug 15, 2011
    Posts:
    110
    For the love of all that is good and holy in the world, I want SOMEONE to do whatever it is that needs to be done to get a more current version of MonoDevelop working with Unity, because this is unacceptable:

     
  6. Tak

    Tak

    Joined:
    Mar 8, 2010
    Posts:
    1,001
    While bug reports are always welcome, if you're itching to contribute, you're certainly welcome to create a github fork and send us a pull request.

    We made some fixes in these areas for Unity 4 - what version of Unity are you using?

    :D


    As for the rest, we're working on integrating MD 3 for an upcoming (post-4.1) Unity release, so we'll benefit from all the hard work that the MD team's been doing - that should both allow us to share the benefits of the hard work the MD team's been doing and enable us to more easily share our changes with them again.
     
  7. Tak

    Tak

    Joined:
    Mar 8, 2010
    Posts:
    1,001
    Are you using the on-the-fly automatic formatting?
    Unfortunately, that is an experimental feature in MD 2.8, and still has some quirks. It's disabled by default, and can be toggled in the MD preferences.
     
  8. aaronflippo

    aaronflippo

    Joined:
    Jun 7, 2012
    Posts:
    45
    Hey Tak, thanks for weighing in. To answer your question - I'm mostly on Unity 3.5 currently.

    Good to know you're working on a MD 3 integration, sounds like that will address most of the issues people are having!