Build on Windows, Deploy on Linux

Yups.

I think there’s nothing can beat Visual Studio when it comes to .NET development. MonoDevelop like Miguel de Icaza said in this presentation is nothing close to VS2012. But I do interested on where Xamarin Studio will headed.

Developing and Compiling I think still ok on Windows. Just need to deploy and test an assembly on Linux.

So how we do that ? How we transfer that binary to the Linux server. I assume that the server won’t have a UI for performance sake. I think that’s the best. We can fine tune the server for processing concurrent request and not for the fancy UI.

The tools we need is just a simple binary executable and command on Windows. I know this from this blog post.

How to: Copying Files from Windows to Linux via SSH (vice-versa)

We need to download that binary from this page. Just find pscp.exe. Select the latest version. Download it directly.

 

As soon as it arrived on your windows machine, just copied it to Windows, so we can execute it from anywhere via command line.

You can use it like this.

pscp C:\Documents\helloWorld.txt username@165.1.122.76:/home/your/destination/folder/

Here’s how I test it

And I’m so happy when I see that file is in the server.

When you have a lots of files, it’s best to compress it so we can transfer it as a single file. You can use the default compression in windows.

Or you can use the 7zip if you are prefer the smaller files.

In this step I will use default windows compression. To unzip it in Linux you need to install it first. Just execute this command to install

yum install unzip

Then execute this command to unzip the file

unzip pics.zip  -d /tmp

 

Very easy right ?

 

Develop on Windows. Deploy on Linux

 

You will got the best from both worlds

 

Cheers

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FxSharp going Mono

In this blog post I will tell you my experience porting my open source .NET project to Mono. It’s very easy.

FxSharp is my Expert Advisor System for MetaTrader 4 written in C#. MetaTrader is terminal used by Forex retail trader to enter the transaction. There’s a programming language called MQL. You can use it to create your own expert advisor, but it’s very ancient. Procedural and sucks ! MQL 5 is not a big different with MQL 4. It’s a object oriented language using c++ like syntax. It’s not c++. It’s only like c++. You can see a horrible codes written in this language. C# is better for developer productivity. I use Trade Platform .NET to bridge the MQL into C#. It’s very nice open source project.

First, we need to check out the source code from github.

Change to the directory and you will find solution file. We will build this with xbuild. Before that don’t forget to change the permission of that source code.

After xbuild the solution, you will find that everything is compiled fine.

But when I run it, i ‘ve got this simple and strange error message.

I’m very confused at the first time. Because it doesn’t tell the detail. So I do some googling and found that’s I’m using unsupported API. How do I know which one ?? Finally I found a nice tools called MoMA (The Mono Migration Analyzer)

I download and run it to analyze my application on windows.

Include all the assembly tobe analyzed. You can find guide using MoMA here.

I take a look at the report and found that there’s a problem in entry point.

Seems I use the spesific windows functionality here.

Well, I just need to comment it in the caller.

I run it again and voila. It’s works. My server is running on linux.

Ok. Now I need to connect the Expert Advisors to point to the Linux Servers. First I need to disable the firewall. I don’t want to get caught up setting one by one, so I choose to disable the firewall.

 

Fill the expert advisors settings. And Ok.

And… Boom. The program is running but seems it can’t load the assembly required for the process. Trade Platform load the assembly dynamically to App Domain. So there’s something wrong with the loading process I think. Why it can’t find the assembly…

Finally I found the problematic codes for loading assembly. It use hardcode to create path for the assembly.

I found a good explanation about the best practice for compatibility between windows and linux. Read this article.

 

I change the code into something like this. Using method .NET provided.

After push and pull from github. Running it. It’s working now !

The Quarts scheduler, parser, tcp/ip. All the functionality.

 

It’s very easy to run your .NET application on Linux. Mono is the answer.

It’s awesome

 

Cheers

Linux/Mono are King/Queen for my Server

Whaaat !

C# and .NET is free but Windows ….

Yes. If you read my blog. You will think I am a windows fanatic. Well, that’s because it’s the first platform and it’s easy. But seems today easy and comfortable is not enough. When we’re talking about hundred and hundreds of server. Windows can be a bottleneck to your business. Money is the problem. License cost.

I love .NET framework so much, C# language is elegant, async await is beauty. Visual Studio is an awesome tools. A lot of people I talk confuse that they think c# and .net is not free. It’s a shocking experience for them when I tell java or php guy that it’s free. But….

Visual Studio is not Free.
SQL Server is not Free.
Windows Server is not Free.

Ok. That’s fine till now.

With the great power, more feature will come a greattttt…. PRICE.

License

This become a problem when you have a lot of server. Client is cheap, but server is not. We have to be honest here. When it comes to business, money speak. Facebook, Google, Twitter are using Linux for their server. That’s because it’s free, free of cost and license also free to modify based on their needs. Optimization is the key when it’s come to high performance server apps. You have to understand your tools from the highest level to the lowest level.

I would propose that client development still on windows, because it’s great. Microsoft is always been the best when it comes to UI, DirectX is cool, WPF is amazing. There’s nothing changes in this area. Stick to the Windows on the Client application.

But for the server, I think it’s better to use Linux, because it’s cheap and we can focus on buying great server hardware/machine. License cost won’t kill your business. You can still remain profitable.

A couple years ago I create a software team called Triplelands, we stick using Java on the server side. As the result, you know what ? It’s very painful. After you know c# for so long with all great feature you have to go with ancient language like Java.

Mono

Mono is multiplatform implementation of .NET framework and CLR. I underestimate this before when I’m on university. I know it but I won’t dare touch it even see it. I don’t see any hope on that stuff. Till now.

Finally I look Mono again. Xamarin makes me believe that this is something that can evolve. If there’s a big guy behind the tools, we should be feel safe right ?

I look at it a lil closer and it’s turn out that’s brilliant. You can build your apps in windows and deploy it on Linux. Directly. NO need to recompile. Some feature maybe not available, something like windows form, asp .net web form… But I don’t care about that. It’s more than enough. Because I care about building a server, backend not a UI.

Ok. Enough talking. Show me the code.

Installation

Linux VM Setup

Todo this you need a linux OS. You can get it in virtual machine. I got my VM from Coursera. It’s a great website. You can download a Fedora VM from this. You need a VMWare Player to use it.

Mono Setup

Now we’re ready to setup a mono. We need to download the Mono 3.

http://download.mono-project.com/sources/mono/mono-3.0.7.tar.bz2

I failed to install the latest tar file. But version 3.0.7 is working. I will try to find the problem next time. But now let’s try the working tar file.

You can follow the instruction from http://www.mono-project.com/Release_Notes_Mono_3.0#New_in_Mono_3.0.10. Just a couple of command.

To make it sure it’s working. Please type mono in the terminal. You will see the message like this.

Mercurial Setup

Because I want to make it easy to version and do build from my source code in the future. I need to install version control. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. For windows I will use tortoisehg.

In linux you can find svn and git have already been installed, but not mercurial. You need to install it as a root. Please execute this command to install mercurial.

 

Hello Async Await for it ……..Demo !

Now let’s do some code. I want to try async await so bad in this demo. So i ‘ve just stolen the the async code from this page. I turn that into console apps. I don’t need GUI on the server.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/hh300224.aspx

After finish code, building and test the previous code. We need to create a mercurial repository and make it available to VM.

I want to see that we can run the assembly compiled on windows into linux directly without recompilation. So I will include the executable file into the repository.

Now we need to run the mercurial server so it can be accessed from linux.

Please access your host computer from linux. You will see page like this.

From linux you need to clone the repository.

 

Please don’t forget to change the permission to the files in linux. The simplest one is to change the mode into 777. Yeah. Silly. But I want this samples to get running as fast as I can.

Ok now we need to check the assembly can running. Just execute this command.

Wow. It’s working. This is HUGE. Async await run directly from assembly compiled from windows !

Ok. Now we want to test building the assembly from the source code in linux. I will use xbuild for this experiment to build the solution. You can think xbuild as msbuild on linux.

Execute the command like below.

It’s success. After that run the assembly like the previous one.

It’s running again. Amazing right ?

Do you have something awesome needs running on Linux ?

Try Mono !

 

Cheers

Xamarin and Mono … You are rock !

I’ve known Mono quite a couple years ago but I didn’t really have a chance to try it out and dig deeper into this stuff. Honestly, when I hear about it, I’m a lil bit skeptical about it. Because back in the day, the implementation is very very incomplete. But now everything is change. And I’m ready to change my opinion too about that. This would be fun.,

Previous week I’ve been playing around and try some nice toys called Xamarin. Do you know what it is ? That’s make c# developer comes true ! You transition to become a mobile developer is very very smooth. Your learning curve is small. Easier to made a great apps and make money of course. Check their website and try it yourself.

 

 

If You love c# so bad. You praise Visual Studio a lot. This stuff is for you ! About last week ago they held a developer conference called Xamarin Evolve. I think they will upload this website soon. Check it regularly.

Fortunately channel9 able to interview Miguel de Icaza. This interview is amazing. He is a brilliant guy behind Mono and Xamarin.

And the things that made Xamarin posible is Mono. I will talk about it later in this blog.

Stay tuned !

Cheers