1 files changed, 91 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/csharp/mono/readme.txt b/csharp/mono/readme.txt
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..ad873a58
--- /dev/null
+++ b/csharp/mono/readme.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,91 @@
+Getting started with Protocol Buffers on Mono
+---------------------------------------------
+
+Prerequisites:
+
+o Mono 2.4 or higher. Earlier versions of Mono had too
+  many issues with the weird and wonderful generic type
+  relationships in Protocol Buffers. (Even Mono 2.4 *did*
+  have a few compile-time problems, but I've worked round them.)
+
+o Some sort of Linux/Unix system
+  You can try running with Bash on Windows via MINGW32 or
+  something similar, but you're on your own :) It's easier
+  to build and test everything with .NET if you're on
+  Windows.
+
+o The native Protocol Buffers build for your system.
+  Get it from http://code.google.com/p/protobuf/
+  After building it, copy the executable protoc
+  file into this directory.
+  
+o The NUnit binaries from http://nunit.org
+  I generally just download the latest version, which
+  may not be the one which goes with nunit.framework.dll
+  in ../lib, but I've never found this to be a problem.
+  
+Building the code with current sources
+--------------------------------------
+
+1) Edit buildall.sh to tell it where to find nunit-console.exe
+   (and possibly change other options)
+   
+2) Run buildall.sh from this directory. It should build the
+   main library code + tests and ProtoGen code + tests, running
+   each set of tests after building it.
+   
+Note that currently one test is ignored in ServiceTest.cs. This
+made the Mono VM blow up - I suspect it's some interaction with
+Rhino which doesn't quite work on Mono 2.4. If you want to see a
+truly nasty stack trace, just comment out the Ignore attribute in
+ServiceTest.cs and rerun.
+
+The binaries will be produced in a bin directory under this one. The
+build currently starts from scratch each time, cleaning out the bin
+directory first. Once I've decided on a full NAnt or xbuild
+strategy, I'll do something a little cleaner.
+
+Rebuilding sources for generated code
+-------------------------------------
+
+1) Build the current code first. The bootstrapping issue is why
+   the generated source code is in the source repository :) See
+   the steps above.
+   
+2) Run generatesource.sh from this directory. This will create a
+   temporary directory, compile the .proto files into a binary
+   format, then run ProtoGen to generate .cs files from the binary
+   format. It will copy these files to the right places in the tree,
+   and finally delete the temporary directory.
+   
+3) Rebuild to test that your newly generated sources work. (Optionally
+   regenerate as well, and hash the generated files to check that
+   the new build generates the same code as the old build :)
+   
+Running the code
+----------------
+
+Once you've built the binaries, you should be able to use them just
+as if you'd built them with .NET. (And indeed, you should be able to
+use binaries built with .NET as if you'd built them with Mono :)
+
+See the getting started guide for more information:
+http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-csharp-port/wiki/GettingStarted
+
+FAQ (Frequently Anticipated Questions)
+--------------------------------------
+
+Q) This build process sucks! Why aren't you doing X, Y, Z?
+A) My Mono skills are limited. My NAnt skills are limited. My
+   MSBuild/xbuild skils are limited. My shell script skills are
+   limited. Any help is *very* welcome!
+   
+Q) Why doesn't it build ProtoBench etc?
+A) This is a first initial "release" I'll add more bits to
+   the build script. I'll be interested to see the results
+   of benchmarking it on Mono :)
+
+Any further questions or suggestions? Please email skeet@pobox.com
+or leave a request at
+http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-csharp-port/issues/list
+