Mono profile in Visual Studio 2012

Recently I step upon an issue of compiling a project using Mono. Mono itself comes with nice tool called xbuild which is a msbuild brother in Mono world. Xbuild can be used to compile a project from command line.

I wanted to compile my project targeting Mono under Visual Studio 2012. Unfortunately, targeting for Mono (profile=Mono) does not exists in Visual Studio. Following instructions will add new profile and then new target – Mono – will be available.

1. Download and install Mono from this location.
2. Create Mono directory in somewhere on your drive. We will later copy it to Program Files.
3. Copy content from C:Program Files (x86)Mono-3.2.3libmono4.5 to Mono directory.
4. Inside Mono directory create new directory called RedistList

5. In RedistList folder create file called FrameworkList.xml with following content:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<FileList Redist="Mono_3.2.3" Name="Mono 3.2.3 Profile" RuntimeVersion="4.5" ToolsVersion="4.5"></FileList>

6. Go to C:Program Files (x86)Reference AssembliesMicrosoftFramework.NETFrameworkv4.5 and create there a folder called Profile

7. Copy folder Mono (the one you created in step 2) into Profile folder.

8. Add following key in your registry:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv4.0.30319SKUs.NETFramework,Version=v4.5,Profile=Mono (note that this is just a key, no values inside)

Now when you start your Visual Studio 2012 you should be able to select target called Mono 3.2.3 Profile