Generating a Linux executable with Mono with mkbundle

Question

A C# file in mono can be compiled using gmcs command. This will create a hello.exe file.

$ gmcs hello.cs
$ ls
hello.cs  hello.exe
$ ./hello.exe
Hello from Mono!

To generate a linux executable, I tried this command, but it generates the error:

$ gmcs /t:exe hello.cs /out:hello

Unhandled Exception: System.ArgumentException: Module file name 'hello' must have file extension.

I want create a standalone executable so that I can execute it simply run it by saying and I get the desired output:

$ ./hello
Hello from Mono!

I searched and found a solution which mentions of a tool called mkbundle:

$ mkbundle -o hello hello.exe --deps
Sources: 1 Auto-dependencies: True
embedding: /home/ed/Projects/hello_world/hello.exe
embedding: /mono/lib/mono/1.0/mscorlib.dll
Compiling:
as -o /tmp/tmp54ff73e6.o temp.s
cc -o hello -Wall temp.c `pkg-config --cflags --libs mono` /tmp/tmp54ff73e6.o
Done

$ ls -l
total 3
-rwxr-xr-x  1 ed users 1503897 2005-04-29 11:07 hello
-rw-r--r--  1 ed users     136 2005-04-29 11:06 hello.cs
-rwxr-xr-x  1 ed users    3072 2005-04-29 11:06 hello.exe

This utility does not seem to exist in my Mono install. I found that this is available in mono-devel package. To install this package meant installing around 82 other packages. My goal was to keep my mono install minimal until sometime.

Is there a way to install mkbundle standalone?

Answer 1

I was very impatient and felt that the package mono-2.0-devel might have mkbundle. So I went ahead and installed mono-2.0-devel which needed only 18 additional packages. When I typed mkb and hit tab, it showed me mkbundle2.

I tried:

$ mkbundle2 -o hello hello.exe --deps
OS is: Linux
Sources: 1 Auto-dependencies: True
   embedding: /home/minato/Projects/Practice/mono/hello.exe
   embedding: /usr/lib/mono/2.0/mscorlib.dll
Compiling:
as -o temp.o temp.s 
cc -ggdb -o hello -Wall temp.c `pkg-config --cflags --libs mono`  temp.o
Done

$ ls
hello  hello.cs  hello.e  hello.exe

$ ./hello
Hello from Mono!

This was what I needed in the first place.

Thanks to the command-not-found tool.