Since there were still people visiting this repo, I think it might make sense to capture the current state of things in a short notice after #109.
Through tremendous effort by @knuxbbs @lytico @gluckez @hwthomas @MakiWolf and others, this repo restored the GTK-based code editor for MonoDevelop to build once again against GTK2 on Linux in 2022-2023.
It would be more challenging than ever to move on from that spot, because
- GTK itself has breaking API changes in GTK 2→3→4. The effort to porting to GTK3 has been showed to be overwhelming (based on @MakiWolf's pull requests), and more difficult to GTK4. In the end, GTK might not be a sustainable option if it keeps breaking backwards compatibility in each major release.
- The dependency on Mono is also limiting the key dependencies like MSBuild and so forth, which blocked upgrade to more recent .NET releases (.NET 7+). WineHQ took over maintaining the mono runtime but didn't show interest in expanding their scope to IDE like this. So, migrating fully to the latest.NET can be very urgent to keep up with modern development.
With all the above, this repo doesn't seem to have much momentum left, and people might look elsewhere.
AvalonStudio
I wrote about AvalonStudio, but it became inactive since Feb 2022 and stuck with Avalonia 0.10 as Avalonia 11 broke many APIs too.
There is a fork aiming to upgrade it to Avalonia 11, but still many compilation issues remain. So, that's not going to be an easy approach to finish. Besides,
- AvalonStudio is with a stricter license.
- AvalonStudio doesn't have a mature extension API like SharpDevelop/MonoDevelop.
SharpIDE
It was recently (Dec 2025) that SharpIDE came to my attention:
- It is based on Godot, a modern cross-platform game engine.
- It integrates with modern technology stacks, such as Roslyn and MTP.
- It remains fresh and lots of work is being done.
- There isn’t yet an extension API, so you cannot extend via individual extensions.
OpenDevelop (code name "UnoDevelop", aka SharpDevelop on Uno Platform)
I explored SharpIDE for a few months and tried to contribute some features there, but the progress wasn't fast enough. It also missed a few opportunities to further engage the community on key features (docking, extensibility, etc.).
Therefore, I started to port SharpDevelop 4 to Uno Platform after my work on a few key WPF to Uno bridging projects (UnoEdit, UnoDock, etc.). So, the goals of this new project (OpenDevelop) align well with dotdevelop:
- Build upon existing codebases (SharpDevelop and MonoDevelop are siblings)
- Reuse the battle-tested extension architecture (addin system)
- Modernize with the latest technologies (.NET Project System, Roslyn, LSP, DAP, MTP, SharpDbg, etc.)
- Maintain cross-platform capabilities (starting with Windows and macOS)
The repo will be changed to public on GitHub soon.
Conclusion
If any reader of this wants to contribute to an open source C#/.NET IDE, maybe you want to check out the options on the table.
Since there were still people visiting this repo, I think it might make sense to capture the current state of things in a short notice after #109.
Through tremendous effort by @knuxbbs @lytico @gluckez @hwthomas @MakiWolf and others, this repo restored the GTK-based code editor for MonoDevelop to build once again against GTK2 on Linux in 2022-2023.
It would be more challenging than ever to move on from that spot, because
With all the above, this repo doesn't seem to have much momentum left, and people might look elsewhere.
AvalonStudio
I wrote about AvalonStudio, but it became inactive since Feb 2022 and stuck with Avalonia 0.10 as Avalonia 11 broke many APIs too.
There is a fork aiming to upgrade it to Avalonia 11, but still many compilation issues remain. So, that's not going to be an easy approach to finish. Besides,
SharpIDE
It was recently (Dec 2025) that SharpIDE came to my attention:
OpenDevelop (code name "UnoDevelop", aka SharpDevelop on Uno Platform)
I explored SharpIDE for a few months and tried to contribute some features there, but the progress wasn't fast enough. It also missed a few opportunities to further engage the community on key features (docking, extensibility, etc.).
Therefore, I started to port SharpDevelop 4 to Uno Platform after my work on a few key WPF to Uno bridging projects (UnoEdit, UnoDock, etc.). So, the goals of this new project (OpenDevelop) align well with dotdevelop:
The repo will be changed to public on GitHub soon.
Conclusion
If any reader of this wants to contribute to an open source C#/.NET IDE, maybe you want to check out the options on the table.