I emerged Monodevelop successfully, but it failed on first start with message: <blockquote> Loading error, please reinstall : System.TypeInitializationException: An exception was thrown by the type initializer for MonoDevelop.Core.Services.ServiceManager ---> System.IO.IOException: Could not create file "/home/matt/.config". File already exists. in <0x000d3> System.IO.Directory:CreateDirectoriesInternal (string) in <0x0014e> System.IO.Directory:CreateDirectory (string) in <0x0000e> System.IO.DirectoryInfo:Create () in <0x0004f> (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.IO.DirectoryInfo:Create () in <0x0008f> System.IO.Directory:CreateDirectoriesInternal (string) in <0x0014e> System.IO.Directory:CreateDirectory (string) in <0x00036> MonoDevelop.Core.Services.PropertyService:LoadProperties () in <0x0001c> MonoDevelop.Core.Services.PropertyService:.ctor () in <0x00040> MonoDevelop.Core.Services.ServiceManager:.cctor () --- End of inner exception stack trace --- in (unmanaged) MonoDevelop.SharpDevelopMain:Main (string[]) in <0x00475> MonoDevelop.SharpDevelopMain:Main (string[]) </blockquote> I quickly figured out the problem was that I had a copy of my kernel's ".config" file in my home directory. Removing it allowed Monodevelop to start, and it then created a directory "~/.config/Monodevelop". It seems somewhat likely to me that the occasional developer will have a ".config" in their home directory, so this should probably be looked at it. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. If Monodevelop is already installed, remove/rename/backup your "~/.config" directory. 2. Create a file named "~/.config" 3. Attempt to start Monodevelop Actual Results: Monodevelop borks. Expected Results: It should start normally.
For now, you can use the env. variable XDG_CONFIG_HOME set to something else to avoid this problem. In general, i've talked to todd about this, and he's willing to accept a patch that creates a fatal error when this problem occurs that includes detailed info on the problem, how to fix it, and maybe a URL with more info. Once I find time i'm gonna cook up such a patch, but until then, use the aforementioned variable to change the location. Thanks.
A graphical pop-up error would definitely be more useful for those command-line phobic developers (?). I'm not sure how detailed an explanation is really necessary. Is there any rationale for naming the directory ".config", however? That seems a well-known name for kernel configuration files. Wouldn't .MonoDevelop or .mono/develop be more typical usage of the home directory?
That location is from the freedesktop folks. See http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards_2fconfig_2dspec for more info. It's note widely in use yet, but that's (i guess) the direction people are heading.
This is still broken , please fix it I need monodevelop ! I've tried letting XDG_CONFIG_HOME point to ~/dump same problem ..
@Jonas: Yes, it's still broken because it's a non-trivial thing to fix in the code. You can still use monodevelop, just move the ~/.config file out of the way. If you want to have this fixed sooner, feel free to code up a patch. Thanks.
Closing as this is an upstream issue: http://bugzilla.ximian.com/show_bug.cgi?id=57882 it seems that they are not going to "fix" it because you can easily change the configuration directory name by providing XDG_CONFIG_HOME.
