MonoDevelop: Installing to a SSD Drive for speed

Question

I have a new 256 gig SSD drive which replaced my MacBook Pro's CD drive.

The goal is to make MonoDevelop + MonoTouch app development the fastest possible. How can I get MonoDevelop + MonoTouch + (not sure what else, xcode perhaps?) moved to the SSD drive to make developing the fast. This is the only task the computer has.

The main OS is on a standard drive. I have 8 gigs ram and an i5 so the SSD was the only hardware I think needed to enhance the IDE experience.

This is a software question as it has to do with configuring the IDE exclusively.

Answer 1

@sblom covers the major pieces. You also need to be aware that:

• a lot of temporary files gets created (mostly in \var\tmp) by the compilers;
• a lot of system libraries will also be loaded;

For both cases the comment (from Sebastian Flückiger) hits the nail. You'll get the best performance if your main drive is the SSD drive and keep, les often used, data on your existing hard drive.

That's likely a bigger change that you anticipated. OTOH it also removes the potential issues mentioned by @sblom like updating Xcode (wrt symlinks) and keeping both MonoTouch and MonoDevelop in their default directories (which can be useful when creating/sharing scripts).

Answer 2

Moving MonoDevelop

You can place MonoDevelop.app anywhere you'd like and it should just work--that's the easy part.

Moving MonoTouch SDK

Moving MonoTouch is a little more difficult, but should still be possible. Open the Preferences panel in MonoDevelop, scroll down to the bottom. In the "Other" section, you'll see a page called "SDK Locations". Move MonoTouch from /Developer/MonoTouch to wherever you'd like and then set "MonoTouch SDK" to point to its new home.

Moving XCode

As for moving XCode, if you're on Lion and running the latest XCode (4.3, I think?), you'll find it in /Applications/XCode.app. You can move it to wherever you'd like as well. Many things will be unhappy unless you symlink to its new home from /Applications, and when you upgrade XCode from the Mac App Store, the symlink will probably get stomped.

Answer 3

aren't there issues to do with the MonoTouch licencing code? or is that only if you replace your HD not add another.