2 .\" mkbundle manual page.
3 .\" (C) 2004 Ximian, Inc.
5 .\" Miguel de Icaza (miguel@gnu.org)
7 .de Sp \" Vertical space (when we can't use .PP)
13 mkbundle, mkbundle2 \- Creates a bundled executable.
16 .B mkbundle [options] assembly1 [assembly2 ...]
18 \fImkbundle\fP generates an executable program that will contain
19 static copies of the assemblies listed on the command line. By
20 default only the assemblies specified in the command line will be
21 included in the bundle. To automatically include all of the
22 dependencies referenced, use the "--deps" command line option.
24 There are two modes of operation, one uses an existing Mono binary or
25 a server-hosted list of binaries and is enabled when you use either
33 An older mechanism creates a small C stub that links against the
34 libmono library to produce a self-contained executable and requires a
35 C compiler. It is described in the "OLD EMBEDDING" section below.
37 For example, to create a bundle for hello world, use the following
41 $ mkbundle -o hello --simple hello.exe
45 You can configure options to be passed to the Mono runtime directly
46 into your executable, for this, use the
48 flag. For example, the following disables inlining, by passing the
49 "-O=-inline" command line option to the embedded executable:
52 $ mkbundle -o hello --options -O=-inline --simple hello.exe
55 The simple version allows for cross-compiling, this requires a Mono
56 runtime to be installed in the ~/.mono/targets/TARGET/mono to be
57 available. You can use the "--local-targets" to list all available
58 targets, and the "--cross" argument to specify the target, like this:
61 $ mkbundle --local-targets
63 default - Current System Mono
66 $ mkbundle --cross 4.4.0-debian-8-powerpc hello.exe -o hello-debian
70 The above will bundle your native library into hello-debian for
71 a Debian 8 system running on a PowerPC machine.
73 We provide pre-packages binaries for Mono for various architectures,
74 which allow you to cross compile, use the
76 to get a list of all targets supported, and use the
78 flag to retrieve a target that you do not have installed, like this:
81 $ mkbundle --list-targets
82 Cross-compilation targets available:
83 4.4.0-linux-libc2.13-amd64
84 4.4.0-linux-libc2.13-armel
85 4.4.0-linux-libc2.13-armhf
86 4.4.0-linux-libc2.13-i386
87 4.4.0-macos-10.7-amd64
89 4.4.2-linux-libc2.13-amd64
90 4.4.2-linux-libc2.13-armel
91 4.4.2-linux-libc2.13-armhf
92 4.4.2-linux-libc2.13-i386
93 4.4.2-macos-10.7-amd64
96 $ mkbundle --fetch-target 4.4.2-macos-10.7-i386
100 And then you can produce a binary that will run on 32-bit Mono on
104 $ mkbundle --cross 4.4.2-macos-10.7-i386 hello.exe -o hello-macos
108 Downloaded targets are stored
114 Specifies that a machine.config file must be bundled as well.
115 Typically this is $prefix/etc/mono/1.0/machine.config or
116 $prefix/etc/mono/2.0/machine.config depending on the profile that you
117 are using (1.0 or 2.0)
119 .I "--config-dir DIR"
120 When passed, DIR will be set for the MONO_CFG_DIR environment variable
123 Use this to request mkbundle generate a cross-compiled binary. It
124 Creates a bundle for the specified target platform. The target must
125 be a directory in ~/.mono/targets/ that contains an SDK installation
126 as produced by the mono-package-runtime tool. You can get a list of
127 the precompiled versions of the runtime using --list-targets and you
128 can fetch a specific target using the --fetch-target command line
131 This flag is mutually exclusive with
133 which is used to specify an absolute path to resolve the Mono runtime
134 from and the --runtime option which is used to manually construct the
135 cross-platform package.
138 This option will bundle all of the referenced assemblies for the
139 assemblies listed on the command line option. This is useful to
140 distribute a self-contained image.
143 Use this to hardcode an environment variable at runtime for KEY to be
144 mapped to VALUE. This is useful in scenarios where you want to
145 enable certain Mono runtime configuration options that are controlled
146 by environment variables.
148 .I "--fetch-target target"
149 Downloads a precompiled runtime for the specified target from the Mono
153 Specified which encoding tables to ship with the executable. By
154 default, Mono ships the supporting I18N.dll assembly and the
155 I18N.West.dll assembly. If your application will use the
156 System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding with encodings other than the West
157 encodings, you should specify them here.
161 parameter to request that no implicit encodings should be bundled,
162 including the supporting I18N.dll, use this option if you have ran a
167 flag to bundle all available encodings.
169 Or you can use a comma delimited list of the workds CJK, MidWest,
170 Other, Rare and West to specificy which encoding assemblies to distribute.
173 Adds the `path' do the search list for assemblies. The rules are the
174 same as for the compiler -lib: or -L flags.
176 .I "--library [LIB,]PATH"
177 Embeds the dynamic library file pointed to by `PATH' and optionally
178 give it the name `LIB' into the bundled executable. This is used to
179 ship native library dependencies that are unpacked at startup and
180 loaded from the runtime.
183 Lists all of the available local cross compilation targets available
184 as precompiled binaries on the Mono distribution server.
187 Lists all of the available local cross compilation targets.
189 .I "--machine-config FILE"
190 Uses the given FILE as the machine.config file for the generated
194 This is the default: \fImkbundle\fP will only include the assemblies that
195 were specified on the command line to reduce the size of the resulting
199 Places the output on `out'. If the flag -c is specified, this is the
200 C host program. If not, this contains the resulting executable.
203 Since the resulting executable will be treated as a standalone
204 program, you can use this option to pass configuration options to the
205 Mono runtime and bake those into the resulting executable. These
206 options are specified as
209 You can use the above to configure options that you would typically
210 pass on the command line to Mono, before the main program is
213 Additionally, users of your binary can still configure their own
214 options by setting the
216 environment variable.
219 Use this flag to specify a path from which mkbundle will resolve the
220 Mono SDK from. The SDK path should be the prefix path that you used
221 to configure a Mono installation. And would typically contain files
225 .I SDK_PATH/lib/mono/4.5
228 When this flag is specified,
230 will resolve the runtime, the framework libraries, unmanaged resources
231 and configuration files from the files located in this directory.
233 This flag is mutually exlusive with
237 .I "--target-server SERVER"
238 By default the mkbundle tool will download from a Mono server the
239 target runtimes, you can specify a different server to provide
240 cross-compiled runtimes.
243 The old embedding system compiles a small C stub that embeds the
244 C code and compiles the resulting executable using the system
245 compiler. This requires both a working C compiler installation and
246 only works to bundle binaries for the current host.
248 The feature is still available, but we recommend the simpler, faster
249 and more convenient new mode.
251 For example, to create a bundle for hello world, use the following
255 $ mkbundle -o hello hello.exe
258 The above will pull hello.exe into a native program called "hello". Notice
259 that the produced image still contains the CIL image and no
260 precompilation is done.
262 In addition, it is possible to control whether \fImkbundle\fP should compile
263 the resulting executable or not with the -c option. This is useful if
264 you want to link additional libraries or control the generated output
265 in more detail. For example, this could be used to link some libraries
269 $ mkbundle -c -o host.c -oo bundles.o --deps hello.exe
271 $ cc host.c bundles.o /usr/lib/libmono.a -lc -lrt
274 You may also use \fImkbundle\fP to generate a bundle you can use when
275 embedding the Mono runtime in a native application. In that case, use
276 both the -c and --nomain options. The resulting host.c file will
277 not have a main() function. Call mono_mkbundle_init() before
278 initializing the JIT in your code so that the bundled assemblies
279 are available to the embedded runtime.
280 .SH OLD EMBEDDING OPTIONS
281 These options can only be used instead of using the
282 .B --cross, --runtime
288 Produce the stub file, do not compile the resulting stub.
291 Specifies the name to be used for the helper object file that contains
295 By default \fImkbundle\fP will delete the temporary files that it uses to
296 produce the bundle. This option keeps the file around.
299 With the -c option, generate the host stub without a main() function.
302 By default \fImkbundle\fP dynamically links to mono and glib. This option
303 causes it to statically link instead.
306 Compresses the assemblies before embedding. This results in smaller
307 executable files, but increases startup time and requires zlib to be
308 installed on the target system.
310 If you are using the old embedding on Windows systems, it it necessary
311 to have Unix-like toolchain to be installed for \fImkbundle\fP to
312 work. You can use cygwin's and install gcc, gcc-mingw and as
314 .SH ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
317 Assembler command. The default is "as".
320 C compiler command. The default is "cc" under Linux and "gcc"
323 .I "MONO_BUNDLED_OPTIONS"
324 Options to be passed to the bundled
325 Mono runtime, separated by spaces. See the mono(1) manual page or run mono --help.
327 This program will load referenced assemblies from the Mono assembly
330 Targets are loaded from ~/.mono/targets/TARGETNAME/mono
332 The option "--static" is not supported under Windows when using the
334 Moreover, a full cygwin environment containing at least "gcc" and "as"
335 is required for the build process. The generated executable does not
338 Visit http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-devel-list for details.
340 Visit: http://www.mono-project.com for details
342 .BR mcs(1), mono(1), mono-config(5).