Question

I am trying to make my program written in Visual C# 2010 work on Linux. For that, I have used mkbundle feature, so that potential client doesn’t have to install mono. Unfortunately I am not knowledgeable about Linux or Mono, so I have just followed this: c# cywgwin mono mkbundle windows 7 – cannot compile file

But for some reason mkbundle writes [FAIL] in the end, saying something about “No such file or directory”. I have pasted the full text below. Does anybody know how to solve this?

$ mkbundle -o MyProgram MyProgram.exe --deps
OS is: Windows
Sources: 1 Auto-dependencies: True
   embedding: C:\cygwin\home\Synaps\MyProgram.exe
   embedding: C:\Mono-2.10.8\lib\mono\4.0\mscorlib.dll
   embedding: C:\Mono-2.10.8\lib\mono\4.0\System.Drawing.dll
   embedding: C:\Mono-2.10.8\lib\mono\4.0\System.dll
   embedding: C:\Mono-2.10.8\lib\mono\4.0\Mono.Security.dll
   embedding: C:\Mono-2.10.8\lib\mono\4.0\System.Configuration.dll
   embedding: C:\Mono-2.10.8\lib\mono\4.0\System.Xml.dll
   embedding: C:\Mono-2.10.8\lib\mono\4.0\System.Security.dll
   embedding: C:\Mono-2.10.8\lib\mono\4.0\System.Windows.Forms.dll
   embedding: C:\Mono-2.10.8\lib\mono\4.0\Accessibility.dll
   embedding: C:\Mono-2.10.8\lib\mono\4.0\Mono.WebBrowser.dll
   embedding: C:\Mono-2.10.8\lib\mono\4.0\Mono.Posix.dll
   embedding: C:\Mono-2.10.8\lib\mono\4.0\System.Data.dll
   embedding: C:\Mono-2.10.8\lib\mono\4.0\Mono.Data.Tds.dll
   embedding: C:\Mono-2.10.8\lib\mono\4.0\System.Transactions.dll
   embedding: C:\Mono-2.10.8\lib\mono\4.0\System.EnterpriseServices.dll
   embedding: C:\Mono-2.10.8\lib\mono\4.0\AForge.Imaging.dll
   embedding: C:\Mono-2.10.8\lib\mono\4.0\AForge.dll
   embedding: C:\Mono-2.10.8\lib\mono\4.0\AForge.Math.dll
Compiling:
as -o temp.o temp.s
gcc -mno-cygwin -g -o MyProgram -Wall temp.c `pkg-config --cflags --libs mono-2|d
os2unix`  temp.o
: No such file or directory
temp.c: In function `main':
temp.c:143: warning: implicit declaration of function `g_utf16_to_utf8'
temp.c:143: warning: assignment makes pointer from integer without a cast
temp.c:158: warning: assignment makes pointer from integer without a cast
[Fail]

When I tried to use mkbundle on Linux virtual machine, I successfully obtained Linux executable, but get the following error, whenever I run the program under Ubuntu Linux VM (by Oracle VM Virtual Box):

Unhandled Exception: System.ArgumentException: A null reference or invalid value was found [GDI+ status: InvalidParameter]
  at System.Drawing.GDIPlus.CheckStatus (Status status) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Drawing.Bitmap.SetResolution (Single xDpi, Single yDpi) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.Drawing.Bitmap:SetResolution (single,single)
  at AForge.Imaging.ColorReduction.ColorImageQuantizer.ReduceColors (System.Drawing.Bitmap image, Int32 paletteSize) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at FootMeasure.Program.Main (System.String[] args) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
[ERROR] FATAL UNHANDLED EXCEPTION: System.ArgumentException: A null reference or invalid value was found [GDI+ status: InvalidParameter]
  at System.Drawing.GDIPlus.CheckStatus (Status status) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Drawing.Bitmap.SetResolution (Single xDpi, Single yDpi) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.Drawing.Bitmap:SetResolution (single,single)
  at AForge.Imaging.ColorReduction.ColorImageQuantizer.ReduceColors (System.Drawing.Bitmap image, Int32 paletteSize) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at FootMeasure.Program.Main (System.String[] args) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

Answer 1

As I said in a comment, if you want to produce a self-sufficient Linux executable binary, you should not use mkbundle on Windows. You should run mkbundle on Linux to get a Linux executable (and you probably should care about Linux-X86 in 32 bits and Linux-x86-64 in 64 bits, which are different).

I suggest you to compile and run your application in a Linux box (you could even install a Linux system inside a VM if you want). So the simplest way is to install a Linux distribution (e.g. Debian) on your machine.

I don’t think you’ll easily find a cross-compiler able to compile, on a Windows box, a Mono program targeted for Linux.

And what you are doing (running mkbundle on Windows) is producing a Windows executable (for Cygwin), it cannot give you a Linux binary executable, whatever option you try.