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A week or so ago, I made my way to Vienna for the .NET + GNOME Hackfest 2013 – a chance to link up with my fellow developers and help shape the future of Mono apps as part of desktop Linux.

The trip was far from simple, nearly missing my outgoing flight thanks to obstinate Heathrow security staff – and my suitcase not making it to Vienna with me. However, despite those little “teething issues”, it was good to get a chance to meet my counterparts elsewhere in the desktop space.

My time at the hackfest was mostly concentrated on getting a bundle of the core frameworks packaged, bugfixed, and uploaded – a majority of developers use Debian or Ubuntu, so providing them with up to date tooling is important. Over the few days I was there (I arrived late & had to leave early) I got all the core Mono framework and related updated, including a new MonoDevelop release. It was also a good chance to discuss best practice with various binding maintainers, to ensure that the final release of GTK# and related libraries is in an easy-to-package form.

And perhaps more importantly, I found a seller of Red Bull Simply Cola and was able to shove a dozen cans in my suitcase for the return journey.

More than anything else, I think it gave upstream hackers a chance to observe the distribution maintainer’s job up close – and a chance to see how much work is involved, beyond just running “make install” – I hope they found that interesting!

Thanks to the event sponsors:

Collabora Ltd, Open Source Consulting

Norkart AS, Norway’s premier supplier of Geographic Information Systems and related consulting

Hotel Schottenpoint, our hotel partner

Novacoast IT, Professional Services and Product Development

The GNOME Foundation, providers of the GNOME desktop

The University of Vienna and the Institute for Theoretical Chemistry, our venue sponsors