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This question is to those who are developing on android with Mono:

  • how close to developing in regular C# is Monodevelop android development
  • is there a cheaper version then $399
  • can you use Visual Studio to develop on the droid.
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3 Answers 3

up vote 3 down vote accepted

In theory, parts of your development could be done in VS, but any UI building will have to be done in MonoDevelop. You can develop your application in VS2010 using MonoDevelop. You can get the trial version, which will allow you to build against the Android emulator, but if you want to run MonoDroid applications on a phone, you will have to buy the license.

The mono project has gone to great lengths to match the standard Microsoft libraries within Mono, so almost all the namespaces you use will be available in MonoDevelop.

Update: Unlike MonoTouch, MonoDroid allows you to develop the whole project from either MonoDevelop OR VS2010. This tutorial walks you through a Hello World app in VS2010. I assumed the development process was going to be similar to MonoTouch, were some development had to happen in MonoDevelop

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I guess that is not what I wanted to hear, but what ya gonna do, right? How does the licensing work ? do I have to buy a full license every year ? –  The Lazy Coder Apr 25 '11 at 15:41
@Jason: Your license will not expire, but to receive software updates, you'll need to buy licenses yearly –  Dan McClain Apr 25 '11 at 16:36
Thanks, I appreciate the information. They dont make it real clear on the site. And I like C# much more than Java. It might be a good option to get the license just for that fact alone. Not to mention I could probably develop faster in C# than in java. I guess now I should look up the characteristic differences of MonoDroid and Mono development. –  The Lazy Coder Apr 25 '11 at 16:49
Just to note, the Upgrade License for the $400 pro license is $250 per year (after the first year), so it won't be the full $400 a year –  Dan McClain Apr 25 '11 at 16:50
ok. That sounds like it is a little more fair then 400$ each year. I am now seriously contemplating it. –  The Lazy Coder Apr 25 '11 at 16:54

is there a cheaper version then $399

There is a student/academic license too, for $79.

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I have developed two apps using Mono for Android. In many cases, the Java and C# code are very similar. Mono for Android uses the same methods, however, it capitalizes the first letter. Instead of setContentView in Java, it's SetContentView. I recently translated a barcode scanning application from Java to Mono for Android in about 30 hours (it took me 80 hours to make in Eclipse.) I just copied and pasted code and change the first letter. That took care of 2/3 of the work.

You can still use the Java API in Mono for Android. Just make sure you use the right namespaces in your using directive.

As for layouts, I just copied those as is from Eclipse and they worked fine. If you create new layout files, ending in .axml, you can get intellisense.

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