The setup of a ADF solution in the
MonoDevelop IDE proved to be a piece of cake. MonoDevelop can use the MS Visual Studio 2005 solution file, so there was porting required whatsoever.
Why didn't we use Eclipse?
During the initial design of the development environment Eclipse was considered as IDE for the ADM project. To create a C# developent ability in Eclipse the Eclipse plug-in Emonic was used. Emonic provides:
* a C# editor with syntax highlighting with code completion support
* a wizard which adds each new C# file to an Apache Ant or NAnt build file
* a build mechanism which invokes Ant or NAnt (which has to be installed separately)
It does not provide:
* A debugger -sorry!
* Refactorings
* A surface builder
Although a working .NET development environment was established, the major drawback of the Eclipse IDE was the need to recreate the ADF project in Eclipse, since the VS solution file could not be used. This proved to be a rather cumbersome task for which an automated solution was not iminent. Furthermore Nant proved to be not as userfriendly as aspected.
In this case the ease of use of MonoDevelop provailed above the fact that Eclipse is an industry standard on its own.