Original article published 2007-10-04
As of today, the Mono build in OpenEmbedded is working pretty well. Mono support for ARM and other embedded architectures should add some interesting capabilities for embedded Linux devices. Having written a number of large embedded Linux applications, I can really appreciate the advantages of high level languages for exception handling. It is also interesting to note that Java support in OpenEmbedded is making progress as well (http://jalimo.org/wiki/doku.php). Windows CE developers have already taken to the .net compact framework in a big way, so its nice to see similar capabilities for embedded Linux systems.
A feed has been set up for installing mono packages on your Openmoko phone. Add the following line to a /etc/ipkg/*-feed.conf file:
src/gz mono-armv4t http://dev.bec-systems.com/feed/openmoko/mono
And then:
ipkg update
ipkg install mono
The packaging is fairly granular, so look at the listing in the above URL to see a complete list of what is available.