Question

I tried searching a bit and didn’t find an answer. Does the Razor View Engine work in Mono?

Answer 1

Yes, it does. I have it working with mono on Linux.

You need mono 2.10.2+ from the stable sources from
http://ftp.novell.com/pub/mono/sources-stable/
http://download.mono-project.com/sources/mono/

Then, you need to localcopy these assemblies into your app’s bin directory (you take them from Visual Studio on Windows):

System.Web.Mvc.dll
System.Web.Razor.dll
System.Web.WebPages.dll
System.Web.WebPages.Deployment.dll
System.Web.WebPages.Razor.dll

Then, you might have to get rid of the following errors you might have made like this:

Error: Storage scopes cannot be created when _AppStart is executing.
Cause: Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.dll was localcopied to the bin
directory.
Resolution: Delete Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.dll and use the mono
version.

Error: Invalid IL code in System.Web.Handlers.ScriptModule:.ctor ():
method body is empty.
Cause: System.Web.Extensions.dll somehow gets localcopied to the bin
directory.
Resolution: Delete System.Web.Extensions.dll and use the mono version.

Error: The classes in the module cannot be loaded. Description: HTTP
500. Error processing request.
Cause: System.Web.WebPages.Administration.dll was localcopied to the bin
directory.
Resolution: Delete System.Web.WebPages.Administration.dll and unreference it

Error: Could not load type
‘System.Web.WebPages.Razor.RazorBuildProvider’ from assembly
‘System.Web.WebPages.Razor, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35’. Description: HTTP 500. Error
processing request.
Cause: System.Web.Razor.dll is corrupt or missing (or x64 instead of x32 or vice-versa) …
Resolution: Get an uncorrupted version of System.Web.Razor.dll and
localcopy to the bin directory

Edit
As of mono 2.12 / MonoDevelop 2.8, all of this is not necessary anymore.

Note that on 2.10 (Ubuntu 11.10), one needs to localcopy System.Web.DynamicData.dll as well, or else you get an error that only occurs on App_Start (if you don’t do that, you get a YSOD the first time you call a page, but ONLY the first time, because only then App_Start is called.).

Note
for mono 3.0+ with ASP.NET MVC4:
There is a “bug” in the install script.
Or rather an incompleteness.

mod-mono, fastcgi-mono-server4 and xsp4 won’t work correctly.
For example: fastcgi-mono-server4 gives you this debug output:

[error] 3384#0: *101 upstream sent unexpected FastCGI record: 3 while reading response header from upstream, client: 127.0.0.1, server: localhost, request: "GET / HTTP/1.1", upstream: "fastcgi://127.0.0.1:9000", host: "localhost:8000"

This is, because after the installation of mono3, it uses framework 4.5, but xsp, fastcgi-mono-server4 and mod-mono are not in the 4.5 GAC, only the 4.0 gac.
To fix this, use this bash script:

#!/bin/bash

# Your mono directory
#PREFIX=/usr
PREFIX=/opt/mono/3.0.3


FILES=('mod-mono-server4'
       'fastcgi-mono-server4'
       'xsp4')

cd $PREFIX/lib/mono/4.0

for file in "${FILES[@]}"
do
   cp "$file.exe" ../4.5
done


cd $PREFIX/bin

for file in "${FILES[@]}"
do
  sed -ie 's|mono/4.0|mono/4.5|g' $file
done

And if you use it via FastCGI (e.g. nginx), you also need this fix for TransmitFile for the chuncked_encoding bug
Why do I have unwanted extra bytes at the beginning of image? (fixed in mono 3.2.3)

PS:
You can get the .debs for 3.x from here:
https://www.meebey.net/posts/mono_3.0_preview_debian_ubuntu_packages/
or compile them yourselfs from github
Installing Mono 3.x in Ubuntu/Debian
or like this from the stable sources
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1591370

2015

You can now use the Xamarin provided packages

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 3FA7E0328081BFF6A14DA29AA6A19B38D3D831EF
echo "deb http://download.mono-project.com/repo/debian wheezy main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mono-xamarin.list
sudo apt-get update

If you need the vary latest features, you can also fetch the CI packages (nightly builds, so to say), if you need the latest (or almost latest) version

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 3FA7E0328081BFF6A14DA29AA6A19B38D3D831EF
echo "deb http://jenkins.mono-project.com/repo/debian sid main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mono-jenkins.list
sudo apt-get update