Open Source .NET Development [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Introduction

This chapter is not about Open Source .NET projects or necessarily about .NET per se. This chapter is about using existing Open Source tools in your .NET development process. Not everyone is fortunate enough to have a Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) license or Visual Studio.NET (VS.NET). Some people are just too impatient to endure the lengthy VS.NET install process. But I must admit that I do spend about as much time using VS.NET as Emacs. VS.NET's Integrated Development Environment (IDE) does an amazing job of truly integrating source code, database, and Web development, allowing you to use one tool for almost everything. The purpose of this chapter is to show how useful Open Source can be to you, the developer. Open Source is not something that only affects marketing decisions or business plans. The tools listed here have enabled companies to use .NET and still be just as competitive as a company that uses Microsoft's development tools. I would like to point out that you do not have to exclusively use Microsoft or Open Source. In most instances, you can play both sides. For instance, using Windows XP, IIS, and Web Matrix, you can create an ASP.NET page that runs on Mono. You can also use Mandrake Linux (http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/), Emacs, nAnt, and Mono to create a database application that will eventually run on Windows and PostgreSQL. I should point out that some of these tools and products are not even Open Source but are free in the sense that there are no licensing fees or runtime royalties. Using products found in this chapter can greatly reduce the initial cost of starting a development project and allow smaller companies to see greater profits in the end, and yet some of these tools are scalable enough to handle larger projects and teams as well.