Mono(Mono 1.0)

NAME
mono - Mono's ECMA-CLI native code generator (Just-in-Time and Ahead-of-Time)

SYNOPSIS

mono [options] file [arguments...]

DESCRIPTION
mono is a runtime implementation of the ECMA Common Language Infrastructure. This can be used to run ECMA and .NET applications.

The runtime contains a native code generator that transforms the Common Intermediate Language into native code.

The code generator can operate in two modes: just in time compilation (JIT) or ahead of time compilation (AOT). Since code can be dynamically loaded, the runtime environment and the JIT are always present, even if code is compiled ahead of time.

The runtime loads ths specified file and optionally passes the arguments to it. The file is an ECMA assembly. They typically have a .exe or .dll extension.

The runtime provides a number of configuration options for running applications, for developping and debugging, and for testing and debugging the runtime itself.

RUNTIME OPTIONS
The following options are available:

--aot
    This option is used to precompile the CIL code in the specified assembly to native code. The generated code is stored in a file with the extension .so. This file will be automatically picked up by the runtime when the assembly is executed.

    Ahead-of-Time compilation is most useful if you use it in combination with the -O=all,-shared flag which enables all of the optimizations in the code generator to be performed. Some of those optimizations are not practical for Just-in-Time compilation since they might be very time consuming.

    Unlike the .NET Framework, Ahead-of-Time compilation will not generate domain independent code: it generates the same code that the Just-in-Time compiler would produce. Since most applications use a single domain, this is fine. If you want to optimize the generated code for use in multi-domain applications, consider using the -O=shared flag.

    This pre-compiles the methods, but the original assembly is still required to execute as this one contains the metadata and exception information which is not availble on the generated file. When precompiling code, you might want to compile with all optimizations (-O=all). Pre-compiled code is position independent code.

    Pre compilation is just a mechanism to reduce startup time, and avoid just-in-time compilation costs. The original assembly must still be present, as the metadata is contained there.

--config filename
    Load the specified configuration file instead of the default one(s). The default files are /etc/mono/config and ~/.mono/config or the file specified in the MONO_CONFIG environment variable, if set. See the mono-config(5) man page for details on the format of this file.

--help , -h
    Displays usage instructions.

--optimize=MODE , -O=mode
    MODE is a comma separated list of optimizations. They also allow optimizations to be turned off by prefixing the optimization name with a minus sign.

    The following optimizations are implemented:
                 all        Turn on all optimizations
                 peephole   Peephole postpass
                 branch     Branch optimizations
                 inline     Inline method calls
                 cfold      Constant folding
                 consprop   Constant propagation
                 copyprop   Copy propagation
                 deadce     Dead code elimination
                 linears    Linear scan global reg allocation
                 cmov       Conditional moves
                 shared     Emit per-domain code
                 sched      Instruction scheduling
                 intrins    Intrinsic method implementations
                 tailc      Tail recursion and tail calls
                 loop       Loop related optimizations
                 fcmov      Fast x86 FP compares
                 leaf       Leaf procedures optimizations
                 aot        Usage of Ahead Of Time compiled code
                 precomp    Precompile all methods before executing Main
                 abcrem     Array bound checks removal
                 ssapre     SSA based Partial Redundancy Elimination

    For example, to enable all the optimization but dead code elimination and inlining, you can use:
    	-O=all,-deadce,-inline

--security
    Activate the security manager (experimental feature in 1.1). This allows mono to support declarative security attributes (e.g. execution of, CAS or non-CAS, security demands). The security manager is OFF by default (experimental).

-V , --version
    Prints JIT version information.

DEVELOPMENT OPTIONS
The following options are used to help when developing a JITed application.

--debug
    Turns on the debugging mode in the runtime. If an assembly was compiled with debugging information, it will produce line number information for stack traces.

--profile[=profiler[:profiler_args]]
    Instructs the runtime to collect profiling information about execution times and memory allocation, and dump it at the end of the execution. If a profiler is not specified, the default profiler is used.

    Mono has a built-in profiler called `default' (and is also the default if no arguments are specified), but developers can write custom profilers as shared libraries. The shared library must be called `mono-profiler-NAME.so' where `NAME' is the name of your profiler.

    For a sample of the custom profilers look in the Mono source tree for in the samples/profiler.c.

    The profiler_args is a profiler-specific string of options for the profiler itself.

    The default profiler is called `default' and it accepts `alloc' to profile memory consumption by the application; `time' to profile the time spent on each routine and `stat' to perform sample statistical profiling. If no options are provided the default is `alloc,time'.

    For example:
    	mono --profile program.exe

    That will run the program with the default profiler and will do time and allocation profiling.

    	mono --profile=default:stat,alloc program.exe
    Will do sample statistical profiling and allocation profiling on program.exe.

mono --profile=custom program.exe

    In the above sample Mono will load the user defined profiler from the shared library `mono-profiler-custom.so'.

JIT MAINTAINER OPTIONS
The maintainer options are only used by those developing the runtime itself, and not typically of interest to runtime users or developers.

--compile name
    This compiles a method (namespace.name:methodname), this is used for testing the compiler performance or to examine the output of the code generator.

--compileall
    Compiles all the methods in an assembly. This is used to test the compiler performance or to examine the output of the code generator

--graph=TYPE METHOD
    This generates a postscript file with a graph with the details about the specified method (namespace.name:methodname). This requires `dot' and ghostview to be installed (it expects Ghostview to be called "gv").

    The following graphs are available:
              cfg        Control Flow Graph (CFG)
              dtree      Dominator Tree
              code       CFG showing code
              ssa        CFG showing code after SSA translation
              optcode    CFG showing code after IR optimizations

    Some graphs will only be available if certain optimizations are turned on.

--ncompile
    Instruct the runtime on the number of times that the method specified by --compile (or all the methods if --compileall is used) to be compiled. This is used for testing the code generator performance.

-v , --verbose
    Increases the verbosity level, each time it is listed, increases the verbosity level to include more information (including, for example, a disassembly of the native code produced, code selector info etc.).

--break method
    Inserts a breakpoint before the method whose name is `method' (namespace.class:methodname). Use `Main' as method name to insert a breakpoint on the application's main method.

--breakonex
    Inserts a breakpoint on exceptions. This allows you to debug your application with a native debugger when an exception is thrown.

--trace[=expression]
    Shows method names as they are invoked. By default all methods are traced.

    The trace can be customized to include or exclude methods, classes or assemblies. A trace expression is a comma separated list of targets, each target can be prefixed with a minus sign to turn off a particular target. The words `program' and `all' have special meaning. `program' refers to the main program being executed, and `all' means all the method calls.

    Assemblies are specified by their name, for example, to trace all calls in the System assembly, use:
    	mono --trace=System app.exe
    Classes are specified with the T: prefix. For example, to trace all calls to the System.String class, use:
    	mono --trace=T:System.String app.exe
    And individual methods are referenced with the M: prefix, and the standar method notation:
    	mono --trace=M:System.Console:WriteLine app.exe
    As previously noted, various rules can be specified at once:
    	mono --trace=T:System.String,T:System.Random app.exe
    You can exclude pieces, the next example traces calls to System.String except for the System.String:Concat method.
    	mono --trace=T:System.String,-M:System.String:Concat
    Finally, namespaces can be specified using the N: prefix:
    	mono --trace=N:System.Xml

DEBUGGING

You can use the MONO_LOG_LEVEL and MONO_LOG_MASK environment variables to get verbose debugging output about the execution of your application within Mono.

The MONO_LOG_LEVEL environment variable if set, the logging level is changed to the set value. Possible values are "error", "critical", "warning", "message", "info", "debug". The default value is "error". Messages with a logging level greater then or equal to the log level will be printed to stdout/stderr.

Use "info" to track the dynamic loading of assemblies.

Use the MONO_LOG_MASK environment variable to limit the extent of the messages you get: If set, the log mask is changed to the set value. Possible values are "asm" (assembly loader), "type", "dll" (native library loader), "gc" (garbage collector), "cfg" (config file loader), "aot" (precompiler) and "all". The default value is "all". Changing the mask value allows you to display only messages for a certain component. You can use multiple masks by comma separating them. For example to see config file messages and assembly loader messages set you mask to "asm,cfg".

The following is a common use to track down problems with P/Invoke:
	$ MONO_LOG_LEVEL="debug" MONO_LOG_MASK="dll" mono glue.exe

SERIALIZATION
Mono's XML serialization engine by default will use a reflection-based approach to serialize which might be slow for continous processing (web service applications). The serialization engine will determine when a class must use a hand-tuned serializer based on a few parameters and if needed it will produce a customized C# serializer for your types at runtime. This customized serializer then gets dynamically loaded into your application.

You can control this with the MONO_XMLSERIALIZER_THS environment variable.

The possible values are `no' to disable the use of a C# customized serializer, or an integer that is the minimum number of uses before the runtime will produce a custom serializer (0 will produce a custom serializer on the first access, 50 will produce a serializer on the 50th use).

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

GC_DONT_GC
    Turns off the garbage collection in Mono. This should be only used for debugging purposes

MONO_AOT_CACHE
    If set, this variable will instruct Mono to ahead-of-time compile new assemblies on demand and store the result into a cache in ~/.mono/aot-cache.

MONO_ASPNET_NODELETE
    If set to any value, temporary source files generated by ASP.NET support classes will not be removed. They will be kept in the user's temporary directory.

MONO_CFG_DIR
    If set, this variable overrides the default system configuration directory ($PREFIX/etc). It's used to locate machine.config file.

MONO_CONFIG
    If set, this variable overrides the default runtime configuration file ($PREFIX/etc/mono/config). The --config command line options overrides the environment variable.

MONO_DEBUG
    If set, enables some features of the runtime useful for debugging. This variable should contain a comma separated list of debugging options. Currently, the following options are supported:

    keep-delegates
        This option will leak delegate trampolines that are no longer referenced as to present the user with more information about a delegate missuse. Basically a delegate instance might be created, passed to unmanaged code, and no references kept in managed code, which will garbage collect the code. With this option it is possible to track down the source of the problems.

    abort-on-sigsegv
        This option will make the runtime abort when it receives a SIGSEGV signal while executing unmanaged (native) code. This is useful for debugging problems when interfacing with native code.

MONO_DISABLE_AIO
    If set, tells mono NOT to attempt using native asynchronous I/O services. In that case, a default select/poll implementation is used. Currently only epoll() is supported.

MONO_EGD_SOCKET
    For platforms that do not otherwise have a way of obtaining random bytes this can be set to the name of a file system socket on which an egd or prngd daemon is listening.

MONO_EXTERNAL_ENCODINGS
    If set, contains a colon-separated list of text encodings to try when turning externally-generated text (e.g. command-line arguments or filenames) into Unicode. The encoding names come from the list provided by iconv, and the special case "default_locale" which refers to the current locale's default encoding.

    When reading externally-generated text strings UTF-8 is tried first, and then this list is tried in order with the first successful conversion ending the search. When writing external text (e.g. new filenames or arguments to new processes) the first item in this list is used, or UTF-8 if the environment variable is not set.

MONO_GAC_PREFIX
    Provides a prefix the runtime uses to look for Global Assembly Caches. Directories are separated by the platform path separator (colons on unix). MONO_GAC_PREFIX should point to the top directory of a prefixed install. Or to the directory provided in the gacutil /gacdir command. Example: /home/username/.mono:/usr/local/mono/

MONO_LOG_LEVEL
    The logging level, possible values are `error', `critical', `warning', `message', `info' and `debug'. See the DEBUGGING section for more details.

MONO_LOG_MASK
    Controls the domain of the Mono runtime that logging will apply to. If set, the log mask is changed to the set value. Possible values are "asm" (assembly loader), "type", "dll" (native library loader), "gc" (garbage collector), "cfg" (config file loader), "aot" (precompiler) and "all". The default value is "all". Changing the mask value allows you to display only messages for a certain component. You can use multiple masks by comma separating them. For example to see config file messages and assembly loader messages set you mask to "asm,cfg".

MONO_MANAGED_WATCHER
    If set to any value, System.IO.FileSystemWatcher will use the default managed implementation (slow). If unset, mono will try to use FAM under Unix systems and native API calls on Windows, falling back to the managed implementation on error.

MONO_PATH
    Provides a search path to the runtime where to look for library files. Directories are separated by the platform path separator (colons on unix). Example: /home/username/lib:/usr/local/mono/lib

MONO_RTC
    Experimental RTC support in the statistical profiler: if the user has the permission, more accurate statistics are gathered. The MONO_RTC value must be restricted to what the linux rtc allows: power of two from 64 to 8192 Hz. To enable higher frequencies like 4096 Hz, run as root:
    	echo 4096 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq

    For example:
    	MONO_RTC=4096 mono --profiler=default:stat program.exe

MONO_NO_TLS
    Disable inlining of thread local accesses. Try setting this if you get a segfault early on in the execution of mono.

MONO_SHARED_DIR
    If set its the directory where the ".wapi" handle state is stored. This is the directory where the Windows I/O Emulation layer stores its shared state data (files, events, mutexes, pipes). By default Mono will store the ".wapi" directory in the users's home directory.

MONO_THREADS_PER_CPU
    The maximum number of threads in the general threadpool will be 20 + (MONO_THREADS_PER_CPU * number of CPUs). The default value for this variable is 5.

MONO_TRACE
    Used for runtime tracing of method calls. The format of the comma separated trace options is:
    	[-]M:method name
    	[-]N:namespace
    	[-]T:class name
    	[-]all
    	[-]program
    	disabled		Trace output off upon start.
    You can toggle trace output on/off sending a SIGUSR2 signal to the program.

MONO_TRACE_LISTENER
    If set, enables the System.Diagnostics.DefaultTraceListener, which will print the output of the System.Diagnostics Trace and Debug classes. It can be set to a filename, and to Console.Out or Console.Error to display output to standard output or standard error, respectively. If it's set to Console.Out or Console.Error you can append an optional prefix that will be used when writing messages like this: Console.Error:MyProgramName. See the System.Diagnostics.DefaultTraceListener documentation for more information.

MONO_XMLSERIALIZER_THS
    Controls the threshold for the XmlSerializer to produce a custom serializer for a given class instead of using the Reflection-based interpreter. The possible values are `no' to disable the use of a custom serializer or a number to indicate when the XmlSerializer should start serializing. The default value is 50, which means that the a custom serializer will be produced on the 50th use.

FILES
On Unix assemblies are loaded from the installation lib directory. If you set `prefix' to /usr, the assemblies will be located in /usr/lib. On Windows, the assemblies are loaded from the directory where mono and mint live.

~/.mono/aot-cache

The directory for the ahead-of-time compiler demand creation assemblies are located.

/etc/mono/config, ~/.mono/config

Mono runtime configuration file. See the mono-config(5) manual page for more information.

~/.config/.mono/certs, /usr/share/.mono/certs

Contains Mono certificate stores for users / machine. See the certmgr(1) manual page for more information on managing certificate stores.

~/.config/.mono/keypairs, /usr/share/.mono/keypairs

Contains Mono cryptographic keypairs for users / machine. They can be accessed by using a CspParameters object with DSACryptoServiceProvider and RSACryptoServiceProvider classes.

~/.config/.isolatedstorage, ~/.local/share/.isolatedstorage, /usr/share/.isolatedstorage

Contains Mono isolated storage for non-roaming users, roaming users and local machine. Isolated storage can be accessed using the classes from the System.IO.IsolatedStorage namespace.

MAILING LISTS
Visit http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-list for details.

WEB SITE
Visit: http://www.mono-project.com for details

SEE ALSO
mcs(1),mint(1),monodis(1),mono-config(5),certmgr(1).

For ASP.NET-related documentation, see the xsp(1) manual page