Build Environment

Getting Started

If you want to help us by contributing code, great! The CKAN is coded using C#, targeting Mono 4.0. Free tools exist for all the major platforms:

Ubuntu / Linux

You will absolutely need to install the package mono-xbuild to be able to build CKAN. If you are looking for a nice IDE, you can try installing monodevelop. If you aren't using the IDE, you will probably need to separately install the NUnit interface package nunit-console.

If you'd like a more recent version of MonoDevelop than what's packaged with Ubuntu:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ermshiperete/monodevelop-beta
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install monodevelop-5

This will install monodevelop betas into /opt/monodevelop.

You can create a command-line alias for the new monodevelop:

echo "alias monodevelop='/opt/monodevelop/bin/monodevelop-launcher.sh'" >> ~/.bashrc

You will have to re-open your shell for the alias to take effect.

Note: If the ICSharpCode.SharpZipLib library gives errors and there is something about 'CodePage 437 not supported', then you need to install internationalization packages, such as libmono-i18n-west4.0-cil.

After setting up your development environment, you should look at Building CKAN on Linux

Windows

First, you will need an IDE. Some common (and free) choices are:

• Visual Studio Community
• SharpDevelop
• MonoDevelop / Xamarin Studio

It's also essential that you install NUnit to be able to run the test suits.

If you using Visual Studio Community or happen to have access to a license for Visual Studio Pro, ReSharper is very nice to have (a free license can be requested for open source projects).

Mac

The simplest way to begin CKAN development on OSX is with Xamarin Studio.

The first step is to download Xamarin for OS X

Once that has downloaded, open the dmg and run Install Xamarin.app which will guide you through installing the necessary components. After agreeing to the Xamarin license you are given a list of additional components to install, the only necessary one for building the CKAN is Xamarin.Mac.

After this you be shown a list of prerequisites that will be installed, these should be Mono.Framework, Xamarin Studio, and Xamarin.Mac. There might be more prerequisities if you selected other components earlier but these three are the necessary ones.

Once the installer is finished open Xamarin Studio.app and drag CKAN.sls onto the Dock icon or open CKAN.sls through the File/Open menu item.

This will open the CKAN project in Xamarin Studio, you can then build and run the different parts of the CKAN separately or the whole project by selecting them in the project browser on the left of Xamarin Studio