mono

Langue: en

Version: 112404 (mandriva - 01/05/08)

Section: 1 (Commandes utilisateur)

NAME

mono - Mono's ECMA-CLI native code generator (Just-in-Time and Ahead-of-Time)

SYNOPSIS

mono [options] file [arguments...]

DESCRIPTION

mono is a runtime implementation of the ECMA Common Language Infrastructure. This can be used to run ECMA and .NET applications.

The runtime contains a native code generator that transforms the Common Intermediate Language into native code.

The code generator can operate in two modes: just in time compilation (JIT) or ahead of time compilation (AOT). Since code can be dynamically loaded, the runtime environment and the JIT are always present, even if code is compiled ahead of time.

The runtime loads the specified file and optionally passes the arguments to it. The file is an ECMA assembly. They typically have a .exe or .dll extension.

The runtime provides a number of configuration options for running applications, for developing and debugging, and for testing and debugging the runtime itself.

PORTABILITY

On Unix-based systems, Mono provides a mechanism to emulate the Windows-style file access, this includes providing a case insensitive view of the file system, directory separator mapping (from \ to /) and stripping the drive letters.

This functionality is enabled by setting the MONO_IOMAP environment variable to one of all, drive and case.

See the description for MONO_IOMAP in the environment variables section for more details.

RUNTIME OPTIONS

The following options are available:
--aot
This option is used to precompile the CIL code in the specified assembly to native code. The generated code is stored in a file with the extension .so. This file will be automatically picked up by the runtime when the assembly is executed.

Ahead-of-Time compilation is most useful if you use it in combination with the -O=all,-shared flag which enables all of the optimizations in the code generator to be performed. Some of those optimizations are not practical for Just-in-Time compilation since they might be very time consuming.

Unlike the .NET Framework, Ahead-of-Time compilation will not generate domain independent code: it generates the same code that the Just-in-Time compiler would produce. Since most applications use a single domain, this is fine. If you want to optimize the generated code for use in multi-domain applications, consider using the -O=shared flag.

This pre-compiles the methods, but the original assembly is still required to execute as this one contains the metadata and exception information which is not available on the generated file. When precompiling code, you might want to compile with all optimizations (-O=all). Pre-compiled code is position independent code.

Pre compilation is just a mechanism to reduce startup time, increase code sharing across multiple mono processes and avoid just-in-time compilation program startup costs. The original assembly must still be present, as the metadata is contained there.

For more information about AOT, see: http://www.mono-project.com/AOT

--config filename
Load the specified configuration file instead of the default one(s). The default files are /etc/mono/config and ~/.mono/config or the file specified in the MONO_CONFIG environment variable, if set. See the mono-config(5) man page for details on the format of this file.
--desktop
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.
--help, -h
Displays usage instructions.
--optimize=MODE, -O=MODE
MODE is a comma separated list of optimizations. They also allow optimizations to be turned off by prefixing the optimization name with a minus sign.

The following optimizations are implemented:

              all        Turn on all optimizations
              peephole   Peephole postpass
              branch     Branch optimizations
              inline     Inline method calls
              cfold      Constant folding
              consprop   Constant propagation
              copyprop   Copy propagation
              deadce     Dead code elimination
              linears    Linear scan global reg allocation
              cmov       Conditional moves
              shared     Emit per-domain code
              sched      Instruction scheduling
              intrins    Intrinsic method implementations
              tailc      Tail recursion and tail calls
              loop       Loop related optimizations
              fcmov      Fast x86 FP compares
              leaf       Leaf procedures optimizations
              aot        Usage of Ahead Of Time compiled code
              precomp    Precompile all methods before executing Main
              abcrem     Array bound checks removal
              ssapre     SSA based Partial Redundancy Elimination
              sse2       SSE2 instructions on x86
 

For example, to enable all the optimization but dead code elimination and inlining, you can use:

         -O=all,-deadce,-inline
 
--runtime=VERSION
Mono supports different runtime versions. The version used depends on the program that is being run or on its configuration file (named program.exe.config). This option can be used to override such autodetection, by forcing a different runtime version to be used. Note that this should only be used to select a later compatible runtime version than the one the program was compiled against. A typical usage is for running a 1.1 program on a 2.0 version:
          mono --runtime=v2.0.50727 program.exe
 
--security, --security=mode
Activate the security manager, a currently experimental feature in Mono and it is OFF by default.

Using security without parameters is equivalent as calling it with the "cas" parameter.
The following modes are supported:
cas
This allows mono to support declarative security attributes, e.g. execution of Code Access Security (CAS) or non-CAS demands.
core-clr
Enables the core-clr security system, typically used for Moonlight/Silverlight applications. It provides a much simpler security system than CAS, see http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight for more details and links to the descriptions of this new system.
--server
Configures the virtual machine to be better suited for server operations (currently, a no-op).
-V, --version
Prints JIT version information (system configuration, release number and branch names if available).

DEVELOPMENT OPTIONS

The following options are used to help when developing a JITed application.
--debug
Turns on the debugging mode in the runtime. If an assembly was compiled with debugging information, it will produce line number information for stack traces.
--profile[=profiler[:profiler_args]]
Turns on profiling. For more information about profiling applications and code coverage see the sections "PROFILING" and "CODE COVERAGE" below.
--trace[=expression]
Shows method names as they are invoked. By default all methods are traced.

The trace can be customized to include or exclude methods, classes or assemblies. A trace expression is a comma separated list of targets, each target can be prefixed with a minus sign to turn off a particular target. The words `program', `all' and `disabled' have special meaning. `program' refers to the main program being executed, and `all' means all the method calls.

The `disabled' option is used to start up with tracing disabled. It can be enabled at a later point in time in the program by sending the SIGUSR2 signal to the runtime.

Assemblies are specified by their name, for example, to trace all calls in the System assembly, use:

 
         mono --trace=System app.exe
 
 
Classes are specified with the T: prefix. For example, to trace all calls to the System.String class, use:
 
         mono --trace=T:System.String app.exe
 
 
And individual methods are referenced with the M: prefix, and the standard method notation:
 
         mono --trace=M:System.Console:WriteLine app.exe
 
 
As previously noted, various rules can be specified at once:
 
         mono --trace=T:System.String,T:System.Random app.exe
 
 
You can exclude pieces, the next example traces calls to System.String except for the System.String:Concat method.
 
         mono --trace=T:System.String,-M:System.String:Concat
 
 
Finally, namespaces can be specified using the N: prefix:
 
         mono --trace=N:System.Xml
 
 

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.
--break method
Inserts a breakpoint before the method whose name is `method' (namespace.class:methodname). Use `Main' as method name to insert a breakpoint on the application's main method.
--breakonex
Inserts a breakpoint on exceptions. This allows you to debug your application with a native debugger when an exception is thrown.
--compile name
This compiles a method (namespace.name:methodname), this is used for testing the compiler performance or to examine the output of the code generator.
--compileall
Compiles all the methods in an assembly. This is used to test the compiler performance or to examine the output of the code generator
--graph=TYPE METHOD
This generates a postscript file with a graph with the details about the specified method (namespace.name:methodname). This requires `dot' and ghostview to be installed (it expects Ghostview to be called "gv").

The following graphs are available:

           cfg        Control Flow Graph (CFG)
           dtree      Dominator Tree
           code       CFG showing code
           ssa        CFG showing code after SSA translation
           optcode    CFG showing code after IR optimizations
 

Some graphs will only be available if certain optimizations are turned on.

--ncompile
Instruct the runtime on the number of times that the method specified by --compile (or all the methods if --compileall is used) to be compiled. This is used for testing the code generator performance.
--stats
Displays information about the work done by the runtime during the execution of an application.
--wapi=hps|semdel
Perform maintenance of the process shared data.

semdel will delete the global semaphore.

hps will list the currently used handles.

-v, --verbose
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.).

PROFILING

The mono runtime includes a profiler that can be used to explore various performance related problems in your application. The profiler is activated by passing the --profile command line argument to the Mono runtime, the format is:
 
         --profile[=profiler[:profiler_args]]
 
 
Mono has a built-in profiler called 'default' (and is also the default if no arguments are specified), but developers can write custom profilers, see the section "CUSTOM PROFILERS" for more details.

If a profiler is not specified, the default profiler is used.

The profiler_args is a profiler-specific string of options for the profiler itself.

The default profiler accepts the following options 'alloc' to profile memory consumption by the application; 'time' to profile the time spent on each routine; 'jit' to collect time spent JIT-compiling methods and 'stat' to perform sample statistical profiling. If no options are provided the default is 'alloc,time,jit'.

By default the profile data is printed to stdout: to change this, use the 'file=filename' option to output the data to filename.

For example:

 
         mono --profile program.exe
 
 

That will run the program with the default profiler and will do time and allocation profiling.

 
         mono --profile=default:stat,alloc,file=prof.out program.exe
 
 
Will do sample statistical profiling and allocation profiling on program.exe. The profile data is put in prof.out.

Note that the statistical profiler has a very low overhead and should 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).

PROFILERS

There are a number of external profilers that have been developed for Mono, we will update this section to contain the profilers.

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:

         svn co svn://svn.myrealbox.com/source/trunk/heap-shot
         cd heap-shot
         ./autogen
         make
         make install
 

See the included documentation for details on using it.

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:

         svn co svn://svn.myrealbox.com/source/trunk/heap-prof
         cd heap-prof
         ./autogen
         make
         make install
 

To use the profiler, execute:

         mono --profile=desc-heap program.exe
 

The output of this profiler looks like this:

         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
 

The first line describes the iteration number for the GC, in this case checkpoint 102.

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.

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:

         mono --profile=aot program.exe
 
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.

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 various parts of the Mono runtime to gather information about the code being executed.

To use a third party profiler you must pass the name of the profiler to Mono, like this:

 
         mono --profile=custom program.exe
 
 

In the above sample Mono will load the user defined profiler from the shared library `mono-profiler-custom.so'. This profiler module must be on your dynamic linker library path.

A list of other third party profilers is available from Mono's web site (www.mono-project.com/Performance_Tips)

Custom profiles are written as shared libraries. The shared library must be called `mono-profiler-NAME.so' where `NAME' is the name of your profiler.

For a sample of how to write your own custom profiler look in the Mono source tree for in the samples/profiler.c.

CODE COVERAGE

Mono ships with a code coverage module. This module is activated by using the Mono --profile=cov option. The format is: --profile=cov[:assembly-name[/namespace]] test-suite.exe

By default code coverage will default to all the assemblies loaded, you can limit this by specifying the assembly name, for example to perform code coverage in the routines of your program use, for example the following command line limits the code coverage to routines in the "demo" assembly:

 
         mono --profile=cov:demo demo.exe
 
 

Notice that the assembly-name does not include the extension.

You can further restrict the code coverage output by specifying a namespace:

 
         mono --profile=cov:demo/My.Utilities demo.exe
 
 

Which will only perform code coverage in the given assembly and namespace.

Typical output looks like this:

 
         Not covered: Class:.ctor ()
         Not covered: Class:A ()
         Not covered: Driver:.ctor ()
         Not covered: Driver:method ()
         Partial coverage: Driver:Main ()
                 offset 0x000a
 
 

The offsets displayed are IL offsets.

A more powerful coverage tool is available in the module `monocov'. See the monocov(1) man page for details.

DEBUGGING

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:
 
         kill -QUIT pid
 
 
Where pid is the Process ID of the Mono process you want to examine. The process will continue running afterwards, but its state is not guaranteed.

Important: this is a last-resort mechanism for debugging applications and should not be used to monitor or probe a production application. The integrity of the runtime after sending this signal is not guaranteed and the application might crash or terminate at any given point afterwards.

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.

The MONO_LOG_LEVEL environment variable if set, the logging level is changed to the set value. Possible values are "error", "critical", "warning", "message", "info", "debug". The default value is "error". Messages with a logging level greater then or equal to the log level will be printed to stdout/stderr.

Use "info" to track the dynamic loading of assemblies.

Use the MONO_LOG_MASK 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". 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 messages set you mask to "asm,cfg".

The following is a common use to track down problems with P/Invoke:

 
         $ MONO_LOG_LEVEL="debug" MONO_LOG_MASK="dll" mono glue.exe
 
 

SERIALIZATION

Mono's XML serialization engine by default will use a reflection-based approach to serialize which might be slow for continuous processing (web service applications). The serialization engine will determine when a class must use a hand-tuned serializer based on a few parameters and if needed it will produce a customized C# serializer for your types at runtime. This customized serializer then gets dynamically loaded into your application.

You can control this with the MONO_XMLSERIALIZER_THS environment variable.

The possible values are `no' to disable the use of a C# customized serializer, or an integer that is the minimum number of uses before the runtime will produce a custom serializer (0 will produce a custom serializer on the first access, 50 will produce a serializer on the 50th use). Mono will fallback to an interpreted serializer if the serializer generation somehow fails. This behavior can be disabled by setting the option `nofallback' (for example: MONO_XMLSERIALIZER_THS=0,nofallback).

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

GC_DONT_GC
Turns off the garbage collection in Mono. This should be only used for debugging purposes
MONO_AOT_CACHE
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.
MONO_CFG_DIR
If set, this variable overrides the default system configuration directory ($PREFIX/etc). It's used to locate machine.config file.
MONO_CONFIG
If set, this variable overrides the default runtime configuration file ($PREFIX/etc/mono/config). The --config command line options overrides the environment variable.
MONO_DEBUG
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:
collect-pagefault-stats
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.
handle-sigint
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.
keep-delegates
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.
break-on-unverified
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
MONO_DISABLE_AIO
If set, tells mono NOT to attempt using native asynchronous I/O services. In that case, a default select/poll implementation is used. Currently only epoll() is supported.
MONO_DISABLE_MANAGED_COLLATION
If this environment variable is `yes', the runtime uses unmanaged collation (which actually means no culture-sensitive collation). It internally disables managed collation functionality invoked via the members of System.Globalization.CompareInfo class. Collation is enabled by default.
MONO_EGD_SOCKET
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.
MONO_EVENTLOG_TYPE
Sets the type of event log provider to use (for System.Diagnostics.EventLog).

Possible values are:

local[:path]

Persists event logs and entries to the local file system.

The directory in which to persist the event logs, event sources and entries can be specified as part of the value.

If the path is not explicitly set, it defaults to "/var/lib/mono/eventlog" on unix and "%APPDATA%mono\ventlog" on Windows.

win32

Uses the native win32 API to write events and registers event logs and event sources in the registry. This is only available on Windows.

On Unix, the directory permission for individual event log and event source directories is set to 777 (with +t bit) allowing everyone to read and write event log entries while only allowing entries to be deleted by the user(s) that created them.

null

Silently discards any events.

The default is "null" on Unix (and versions of Windows before NT), and "win32" on Windows NT (and higher).

MONO_EXTERNAL_ENCODINGS
If set, contains a colon-separated list of text encodings to try when turning externally-generated text (e.g. command-line arguments or filenames) into Unicode. The encoding names come from the list provided by iconv, and the special case "default_locale" which refers to the current locale's default encoding.
When reading externally-generated text strings UTF-8 is tried first, and then this list is tried in order with the first successful conversion ending the search. When writing external text (e.g. new filenames or arguments to new processes) the first item in this list is used, or UTF-8 if the environment variable is not set.
The problem with using MONO_EXTERNAL_ENCODINGS to process your files is that it results in a problem: although its possible to get the right file name it is not necessarily possible to open the file. In general if you have problems with encodings in your filenames you should use the "convmv" program.
MONO_GAC_PREFIX
Provides a prefix the runtime uses to look for Global Assembly Caches. Directories are separated by the platform path separator (colons on unix). MONO_GAC_PREFIX should point to the top directory of a prefixed install. Or to the directory provided in the gacutil /gacdir command. Example: /home/username/.mono:/usr/local/mono/
MONO_IOMAP
Enables some filename rewriting support to assist badly-written applications that hard-code Windows paths. Set to a colon-separated 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.)

For example, this would work from the shell:

 
         MONO_IOMAP=drive:case
         export MONO_IOMAP
 
 
If you are using mod_mono to host your web applications, you can use the MonoSetEnv directive, like this:
 
         MonoSetEnv MONO_IOMAP=all
 
 
MONO_MANAGED_WATCHER
If set to any value, System.IO.FileSystemWatcher will use the default managed implementation (slow). If unset, mono will try to use FAM under Unix systems and native API calls on Windows, falling back to the managed implementation on error.
MONO_NO_SMP
If set causes the mono process to be bound to a single processor. This may be useful when debugging or working around race conditions.
MONO_PATH
Provides a search path to the runtime where to look for library files. This is a tool convenient for debugging applications, but should not be used by deployed applications as it breaks the assembly loader in subtle ways.

Directories are separated by the platform path separator (colons on unix). Example: /home/username/lib:/usr/local/mono/lib

Alternative solutions to MONO_PATH include: installing libraries into the Global Assembly Cache (see gacutil(1)) or having the dependent libraries side-by-side with the main executable.

For a complete description of recommended practices for application deployment, see the http://www.mono-project.com/Guidelines:Application_Deployment page.

MONO_RTC
Experimental RTC support in the statistical profiler: if the user has the permission, more accurate statistics are gathered. The MONO_RTC value must be restricted to what the Linux rtc allows: power of two from 64 to 8192 Hz. To enable higher frequencies like 4096 Hz, run as root:
 
         echo 4096 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq
 
 

For example:

 
         MONO_RTC=4096 mono --profiler=default:stat program.exe
 
 
MONO_NO_TLS
Disable inlining of thread local accesses. Try setting this if you get a segfault early on in the execution of mono.
MONO_SHARED_DIR
If set its the directory where the ".wapi" handle state is stored. This is the directory where the Windows I/O Emulation layer stores its shared state data (files, events, mutexes, pipes). By default Mono will store the ".wapi" directory in the users's home directory.
MONO_SHARED_HOSTNAME
Uses the string value of this variable as a replacement for the host name when creating file names in the ".wapi" directory. This helps if the host name of your machine is likely to be changed when a mono application is running or if you have a .wapi directory shared among several different computers.

Mono typically uses the hostname to create the files that are used to share state across multiple Mono processes. This is done to support home directories that might be shared over the network.

MONO_STRICT_IO_EMULATION
If set, extra checks are made during IO operations. Currently, this includes only advisory locks around file writes.
MONO_DISABLE_SHM
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.

This is can also be enabled by default by passing the "--disable-shared-handles" option to configure.

MONO_THEME
The name of the theme to be used by Windows.Forms. Available themes today include "clearlooks", "nice" and "win32".

The default is "win32".

MONO_TLS_SESSION_CACHE_TIMEOUT
The time, in seconds, that the SSL/TLS session cache will keep it's entry to avoid a new negotiation between the client and a server. Negotiation are very CPU intensive so an application-specific custom value may prove useful for small embedded systems.

The default is 180 seconds.

MONO_THREADS_PER_CPU
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.
MONO_XMLSERIALIZER_THS
Controls the threshold for the XmlSerializer to produce a custom serializer for a given class instead of using the Reflection-based interpreter. The possible values are `no' to disable the use of a custom serializer or a number to indicate when the XmlSerializer should start serializing. The default value is 50, which means that the a custom serializer will be produced on the 50th use.
MONO_XMLSERIALIZER_DEBUG
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.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES FOR DEBUGGING

MONO_ASPNET_NODELETE
If set to any value, temporary source files generated by ASP.NET support classes will not be removed. They will be kept in the user's temporary directory.
MONO_LOG_LEVEL
The logging level, possible values are `error', `critical', `warning', `message', `info' and `debug'. See the DEBUGGING section for more details.
MONO_LOG_MASK
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". 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 messages set you mask to "asm,cfg".
MONO_TRACE
Used for runtime tracing of method calls. The format of the comma separated trace options is:
 
         [-]M:method name
         [-]N:namespace
         [-]T:class name
         [-]all
         [-]program
         disabled                Trace output off upon start.
 
 
You can toggle trace output on/off sending a SIGUSR2 signal to the program.
MONO_TRACE_LISTENER
If set, enables the System.Diagnostics.DefaultTraceListener, which will print the output of the System.Diagnostics Trace and Debug classes. It can be set to a filename, and to Console.Out or Console.Error to display output to standard output or standard error, respectively. If it's set to Console.Out or Console.Error you can append an optional prefix that will be used when writing messages like this: Console.Error:MyProgramName. See the System.Diagnostics.DefaultTraceListener documentation for more information.
MONO_XEXCEPTIONS
This throws an exception when a X11 error is encountered; by default a message is displayed but execution continues
MONO_XSYNC
This is used in the System.Windows.Forms implementation when running with the X11 backend. This is used to debug problems in Windows.Forms as it forces all of the commands send to X11 server to be done synchronously. The default mode of operation is asynchronous which makes it hard to isolate the root of certain problems.
MONO_GENERIC_SHARING
This environment variable is completely unsupported, don't use it. This controls for which classes to enable generic code sharing in principle. Permissible values are "all", "corlib" and "none". The default is "none", meaning that sharing can only happen for corlib classes. Note that to enable generation of shared code the "gshared" compiler option has to be set as well.

VALGRIND

If you want to use Valgrind, you will find the file `mono.supp' useful, it contains the suppressions for the GC which trigger incorrect warnings. Use it like this:
     valgrind --suppressions=mono.supp mono ...
 

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 Windows, the assemblies are loaded from the directory where mono and mint live.
~/.mono/aot-cache

The directory for the ahead-of-time compiler demand creation assemblies are located.

/etc/mono/config, ~/.mono/config

Mono runtime configuration file. See the mono-config(5) manual page for more information.

~/.config/.mono/certs, /usr/share/.mono/certs

Contains Mono certificate stores for users / machine. See the certmgr(1) manual page for more information on managing certificate stores and the mozroots(1) page for information on how to import the Mozilla root certificates into the Mono certificate store.

~/.mono/assemblies/ASSEMBLY/ASSEMBLY.config

Files in this directory allow a user to customize the configuration for a given system assembly, the format is the one described in the mono-config(5) page.

~/.config/.mono/keypairs, /usr/share/.mono/keypairs

Contains Mono cryptographic keypairs for users / machine. They can be accessed by using a CspParameters object with DSACryptoServiceProvider and RSACryptoServiceProvider classes.

~/.config/.isolatedstorage, ~/.local/share/.isolatedstorage, /usr/share/.isolatedstorage

Contains Mono isolated storage for non-roaming users, roaming users and local machine. Isolated storage can be accessed using the classes from the System.IO.IsolatedStorage namespace.

<assembly>.config

Configuration information for individual assemblies is loaded by the runtime from side-by-side files with the .config files, see the http://www.mono-project.com/Config for more information.

Web.config, web.config

ASP.NET applications are configured through these files, the configuration is done on a per-directory basis. For more information on this subject see the http://www.mono-project.com/Config_system.web page.

MAILING LISTS

Mailing lists are listed at the http://www.mono-project.com/Mailing_Lists

WEB SITE

http://www.mono-project.com

SEE ALSO

certmgr(1), mcs(1), monocov(1), monodis(1), mono-config(5), mozroots(1), xsp(1).

For more information on AOT: http://www.mono-project.com/AOT

For ASP.NET-related documentation, see the xsp(1) manual page