After spending many hours testing to make a simple VisualwebGUI 6.0.4, framework 2.0 working, I came with some sort of conclusions. To be just straightforward I won't put all the test I've done and I'll simply describe what I found and just drop the necessary steps (worked fine in my case) to make things run.

Maybe this is a well known issue and has a well known solution but I couldn't find any reference out there, so...

Configuration:

#Server base

OpenSuSe 11.0 Apache2 (2.2.8-28.1) Mono (1.9.1-6.1) mod_mono apache2 module (1.9-20.1)

#Development base

Windows XP , Visual Studio 2005, VisualwebGUI 6.0.4 for framework 2.0

Problem found (some background):

Originally the apache2 mod_mono module uses "mod-mono-server" (/usr/bin/mod-mono-server) which is a script that finally calls THE "mod-mono-server.exe" that is the actual interpreter of all the ASP.NET stuff. There is also a version 2 of the "mod-mono-server" called "mod-mono-server2". Finally there is two more scripts, "xsp" and "xsp2" which both are a Mono ASP.NET Web Server implementation. Basically the problem is that with "mod-mono-server" or "xsp" a VisualwebGUI application won't work because none of the "servers" can't load assemblies for the .NET framework 2.0 but is only loads assemblies for the .NET framework 1.0. There is also another problem, the "mod-mono-server2" can load the framework 2.0 and works fine with any regular ASP.NET but not with VisualwebGUI. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, according to my tests using the "xsp2" a VisualwebGUI runs without problems.

Deploy :

This a basic solution and at first glance not recomended for a production server but it's a start.

1. not use apache2 mono to use with VisualwebGUI

2. use XSP2 to run the VisualWebGUI app

See documentation but a simple example would be:

/usr/bin/xsp2 --port 80 --root /srv/www/htdocs

Copy all the application needed files to /srv/www/htdocs

and simply http://server/Form1.wgx

3. Modification to "Web.config"

To make it work you must make a simple change in the web.config file

Original setting: <Application Code="Form1" Type="WebGUIApplication1.Form1, 'WebGUIApplication1'"/>

Modified setting: <Application Code="Form1" Type="WebGUIApplication1.Form1, WebGUIApplication1"/>

You must also strip the ' ' from the name of the project/solution in this case, 'WebGUIApplication1'.

4. WWW Explorers tests

Works fine for me with Firefox 3.0 (from KDE 3 and Windows) and with IE7 (notably slower than the Firefox at least with VisualWebGUI, not trying to start any discussion about this matter... :) )

Posted in: How to?