WineHQ

Mono is an open-source and cross-platform implementation of the .NET Framework. Wine can use a Windows build of Mono to run .NET applications.

Installing

From source

From a source tree, you can use the "make dev" target to build Wine Mono and configure the current Wine prefix (default or as set by the WINEPREFIX environment variable) to use the build. The "make dev-setup" target will just configure the Wine prefix without building.

Shared Install

For packagers, and users with multiple prefixes, a shared install is recommended.

To create a shared install, download the appropriate binary tarball from https://dl.winehq.org/wine/wine-mono/ (or build it from source with "make bin") and extract it to the appropriate location.

Wine will search for Wine Mono in the following places (replacing 5.0.0 with the expected version):

  • c:\windows\mono\mono-2.0. Extracting a tarball here is not recommended. If you want to install into a specific prefix, use the Prefix Local Install instructions below. It's only included in this list to make it clear that an installed .msi takes priority over the other loctions.
  • The directory specified in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Mono string value "RuntimePath".
  • ${prefix}/share/wine/mono/wine-mono-5.0.0 or ${builddir}/../mono/wine-mono-5.0.0
  • /usr/share/wine/mono/wine-mono-5.0.0
  • /opt/wine/mono/wine-mono-5.0.0


When using a shared install, The "Wine Mono Windows Support" package must still be installed in the prefix. This is handled automatically on prefix update, so normally it shouldn't be a problem, but in some corner cases you might have to run "wineboot -u" to set this up after creating the shared install.

Prefix Local Install

Wine will automatically download and install the appropriate Wine Mono MSI on prefix update, so this shouldn't usually be necessary.

If you wish to use a different MSI installer than the one you'd get automatically:

  • Obtain the MSI file you wish to use, either from https://dl.winehq.org/wine/wine-mono/ or by running "make msi" in a build tree. It's possible you already have the one you want in ~/.cache/wine.
  • Run "wine uninstaller" and remove "Wine Mono Runtime" and "Wine Mono Windows Support" if you have them.
  • Run "wine msiexec /i path/to/wine-mono.msi"

Versions

Wine Version Wine Mono Version
6.6 6.1.1
6.2 6.0.0
5.19 5.1.1
5.11 5.1.0
5.7 5.0.0
4.20 4.9.4
4.17 4.9.3
4.14 4.9.2
4.11 4.9.0
4.7 4.8.3
4.6 4.8.1
4.3 4.8.0
4.0-rc6 4.7.5
3.13 4.7.3
2.14 4.7.1
2.4 4.7.0
2.0-rc1 4.6.4
1.9.12 4.6.3
1.9.8 4.6.2
1.9.5 4.6.0
1.7.37 4.5.6
1.7.32 4.5.4
1.7.7 4.5.2
1.5.16 0.0.8
1.5.5 0.0.4

Building

For build instructions, see the readme at https://github.com/madewokherd/wine-mono

Debugging

As of Wine Mono 0.0.4, the WINE_MONO_TRACE environment variable may be set as follows to trace calls within Mono:

    all                  All assemblies
    none                 No assemblies
    program              Entry point assembly
    assembly             Specifies an assembly
    wrapper              All wrappers bridging native and managed code
    M:Type:Method        Specifies a method
    N:Namespace          Specifies a namespace
    T:Type               Specifies a type
    E:Type               Specifies stack traces for an exception type
    EXPR                 Includes expression
    -EXPR                Excludes expression
    EXPR,EXPR            Multiple expressions
    disabled             Don't print any output until toggled via SIGUSR2

This option is the same as the --trace option in Mono.

Note that "All assemblies" includes the program itself and all libraries shipped with it. Mono is capable of tracing any .NET code. You probably should avoid the "all" trace if there might be proprietary code running in the process.

Activating any trace at all, even a bogus assembly name, will cause Mono to print out all exceptions as they occur. This can be useful, but it can also be misleading as some exceptions are perfectly normal.

If you're not sure which libraries might be involved in a problem, and no exceptions are being raised, try WINE_MONO_TRACE=wrapper. It tends to be low-traffic while also containing useful information.

Sometimes Mono's inlining can obscure the source of an exception, especially NotImplementedException. This can be worked around by setting MONO_INLINELIMIT=0.

Setting WINE_MONO_VERBOSE=1 will display the addresses of all JIT-compiled methods. Setting MONO_VERBOSE_METHOD=MethodName will display detailed information about the method, and break into the debugger if one is attached.

Documentation

Standard .NET namespaces and classes are documented at MSDN here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/w0x726c2.aspx

Test Suite

As of 5.0, Wine Mono includes a test shell which can run tests from Mono and a few of its own. In the future, it'd be nice to include tests from some of the .NET Core projects as well.

The tests can be built using "make tests" in the build tree or downloaded from https://github.com/madewokherd/wine-mono/releases. The "make tests-zip" target will build a zip file for running outside the build tree.

To run the full test suite in Wine, use the "make test" target.

To run the full test suite in Windows, use run-on-windows.bat.

Both of these methods use the -skip-list, -pass-list, and -fail-list command-line switches to skip certain unreliable tests and to determine which tests are expected to pass or fail. Since these are only tested on Esme's build machine, and even there they are unpredictable, expect some unexpected results.

Specific test names can be passed to run-tests.exe as arguments, for example:

$ wine tests/run-tests.exe System.Drawing # run all System.Drawing tests
$ wine tests/run-tests.exe x86.System.Drawing # run the tests only on x86
$ wine tests/run-tests.exe MonoTests.System.Drawing.GraphicsTest:Dpi_556181 # run one specific test

run-tests.exe can be used in the same way on native Linux Mono, or .NET on Windows. It can also be used with the native Mono inside a Wine Mono build tree with the mono-env script:

$ ./mono-env mono tests/run-tests.exe MonoTests.System.Drawing.GraphicsTest:Dpi_556181

Note that this particular Mono environment is only intended for building Wine Mono components, and may not accurately reflect the state of upstream Mono.

Test source code can be found in tools/tests, mono/mono/tests, and mono/mcs/class/*/Test. See https://www.mono-project.com/community/contributing/test-suite/ for information on Mono's tests.

Microsoft .NET

If you need to use Microsoft's implementation of the .NET framework, the Microsoft runtimes can partly run on Wine. You can find tips and share comments with other users at the .NET AppDB page.

You can install the appropriate version of Microsoft's .NET runtime (dotnet35, dotnet30, dotnet20, or dotnet11) through winetricks. Be aware though, that your .NET application still might not work (at least not yet), and Microsoft's .NET runtimes are not free software so be sure to read the EULA before accepting. Mono, on the other hand, is free software, supported by a strong community, and probably a better choice if it works with your application.

.NET Core and .NET 5.0 are different from .NET Framework 4.x and earlier. They are no longer implemented as an OS component, and as such they can work just fine alongside Wine Mono, or alongside earlier .NET Framework versions. Applications relying on .NET 5 will usually include the runtime, meaning that it won't be necessary for users to install it, but the installers should also work fine.

Wine Mono does not make any attempt to implement or replace .NET 5, nor are there any plans to do so. The architectures are very different, and hasn't been demand for a .NET 5 replacement.


This page was last edited on 2 April 2021, at 18:06.