Monobjc is more than one year old, and the time has come to go beyond the Monobjc bridge. In order to develop the .NET programming on Mac OS X, a bridge is not enough. A whole development ecosystem is needed, so any new developer will have all the necessary tools to leverage the power of .NET on Mac OS X. I have identified several tools needed when developing applications:
- IDE: An IDE is great as it speeds up the edition on multiple document and centralized the application development (code writing, compilation and packaging). Unfortunatly, an IDE is a very complex machinery. Identified solutions: fork SharpDevelop or MonoDevelop.
- Reflector: A tool like Red Gate Reflector is useful when dealing with assemblies. The though part is to write the IL reverse-engineering engine. Identified solution: a Reflector clone based on Mono Cecil.
- Obfuscator: When distributing applications, obfuscation is an additional mesaure to protect your investment. Identified solution: an obfuscation tool based on Mono Cecil.
The ecosystem can also be completed by libraries either based on Mac OS X framework (Sparkle, Growl, ...) or existing .NET libraries. Stay tuned as now, the goals for Monobjc are clear.