How to Install Mono on Debian 10/9

The Mono project is sponsored by the Microsoft. It is an open source, cross platform implementation of Microsoft .NET Framework. Mono supports most the modern operating systems with 32-bit and 64-bit architecture. This tutorial helps you with step by step to install Mono on Debian 10 and Debian 9 systems.

Useful tutorial:

• How to Install Visual Studio Code on Debian

Prerequisites

SSH or Shell access to Debian system with sudo privileged account.

Install Mono on Debian

First of all, install some required packages on your Debian system and import GPG key.

sudo apt install gnupg ca-certificates
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys D3D831EF

Now, add Apt repository on your system provide by the official website. Use one of the following commands to add Mono repository to your system based on Ubuntu version.

### Debian 10 (Buster) 

echo "deb https://download.mono-project.com/repo/debian stable-buster main" | sudo \
   tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mono-stable.list

### Debian 9 (Xenial) 

echo "deb https://download.mono-project.com/repo/debian stable-xenial main" | sudo \
   tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mono-stable.list

Once the repository is added. Update the apt cache and install Mono packages on your Ubuntu system.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install mono-complete mono-devel

The mono-devel package is used to compile code. The mono-complete package is used to install everything on the system.

Find Mono Version

Once the installation has finished on your system. Let’s check the installed Mono version using the following command.

mono --version

Output:

Mono JIT compiler version 6.8.0.105 (tarball Tue Feb  4 21:20:20 UTC 2020)
Copyright (C) 2002-2014 Novell, Inc, Xamarin Inc and Contributors. www.mono-project.com
        TLS:           __thread
        SIGSEGV:       altstack
        Notifications: epoll
        Architecture:  amd64
        Disabled:      none
        Misc:          softdebug
        Interpreter:   yes
        LLVM:          yes(610)
        Suspend:       hybrid
        GC:            sgen (concurrent by default)

Run C# Example with Mono

As you have installed Mono on your Ubuntu system. Create a sample c# program to run with Mono. Create a Welcome.cs file and edit in your favorite text editor.

vim Welcome.cs

Add below value to file.

Save file and close it. Then compile the c# program with the c# compiler using below command.

csc Welcome.cs

Once compilation is completed successfully, it will create a exe file in the local directory with the same name as script. In this case a Welcome.exe file is generated in my local directory.

Then, set the execute permission on newly created executable file. After than run the program as below commands.

chmod +x Welcome.exe
./Welcome.exe

See the results on screen:

All done, You have successfully installed Mono on your Debian system. Next you may required to install Visual Studio Code on Debian Linux system.