What a few years ago might have been considered a joke has now become reality: thanks to the Mono Tools for Visual Studio, developers can create RPM packages directly from the MS environment.

After introducing Monotouch, a commercial application for Apple fans, into its product range, Novell is now targeting Windows .Net developers. With a Visual Studio compatible add-in, the development of .Net applications for Linux should become child's play. The Mono Tools for Visual Studio come with a couple of interesting features, enabling the creation of RPM packages for SUSE Linux via the context menu (this probably refers to the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11). Also, Mono apps programmed under Windows can be tested on remote Linux PCs with one click of the mouse.

Mono Tools for Visual Studio costs $100 for the single user version, for the Enterprise version, (license freely transferable within one company), Novell wants around $375. While the two cheaper versions buy the rights only to the production of Mono applications under a free license, (Mono is covered by LGPLv2), the $2500 Ultimate Edition also supports proprietary applications:

"It also includes a commercial license to redistribute Mono under non-LGPL terms on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X PCs for products with volumes under 100,000 and revenues under $2M annually. If your organization intends to redistribute software which embeds or bundles Mono, but is unable to comply with the terms of GNU LGPL v2, the Ultimate Edition may be right for you.''

What a few years ago might have been considered a joke has now become reality: thanks to the Mono Tools for Visual Studio, developers can create RPM packages directly from the MS environment.