I just wanted to write Miguel et. al and thank everyone for the
amazing product that is Mono!
My company, Obtuse Software, recently rolled out their online store
which is 100% powered by Mono (you can see the Mono badge proudly
displayed at the bottom of every page). Some key points about the
site and its Mono utilization:
o PostgreSQL database backend connected by Npgsql.
o Webforms authentication with various Web.config <location>s.
o Logging via log4net.
o Google Checkout integration using the Google Checkout .Net API.
o The purchased software is built on-the-fly by kicking off an
external NAnt build process. NAnt builds both a license assembly and
the NSIS Windows installer.
The whole system is all Linux (CentOS) / all awesomeness. This is my
first production use of Mono and it has been a great joy. Mono's
ASP.NET has been greatly improved since my last failing attempt at a
Mono site (somewhere back around Mono 1.1.x). Mono sensing updates to
assemblies, .aspx files, and the Web.config is a big help.
Now, of course, the entire experience wasn't w/o problems:
o log4net's config doesn't work when embedded into the Web.config
file. I had to use a separate config file and use log4net's
XmlConfigurator.Configure(FileInfo pathToConfig)
o It's difficult to predict the root directory of the webapp. I'm
using Mono's ASP.NET auto-configuration so I *think* what happens is
Mono configures the "~" path (as in, Server.MapPath("~")) relative to
the first .aspx page that's loaded. But I probably can just fix this
by specifically configuring the webapp in the Apache config file.
o We're using https for our site and have found that Mono cannot
handle loading the same webpage using both http:// and https:// For
example, if I load http://www.mysite.com/default.aspx, and then later https://www.mysite.com/default.aspx
, it barfs. It looks like it stays configured to whatever was first
loaded (if http first, then only http works / if https first, then
only https works). Now this is also not a big deal since I just need
to stratify the webapp into separate http and https pieces and use
Apache to setup different VirtualHosts.
o Mono doesn't let you change around the .aspx page on-the-fly like MS
ASP.NET does. For example, if you have a button with an OnClick
method like: <asp:Button id="fooButton" OnClick="FooClick"
runat="server" /> you cannot remove the OnClick attribute w/o
recompiling on Mono, MS you can.
o Had to use the deprecated ServicePointManager.CertificatePolicy
method for SSL communication with Google. Mono does not yet implement
the newer method using ServerCertificateValidationCallback.
Other than these few small hindrances, Mono worked great. Thank you,
again, for such a quality product!
-Abe
PS - If you're interested in what Obtuse Software does, you can
checkout the press release here: http://www.obtusesoft.com/pr.html
zigGIS (Obtuse Software's inaugural product) is an Open Source GIS
extension to ESRI ArcMap._______________________________________________
Mono-list maillist - [email protected]
http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-list
