Mono ASP.NET MVC saga update

As many of you are probably well aware, we failed to ship the recently open-sourced Microsoft ASP.NET MVC with Mono 2.4.2. The release was soon followed by an update, 2.4.2.1, which included the source of MVC but, unfortunately, the story doesn't end here.

Sometime during MVC integration process, we discovered our C# compiler had a bug which made certain parts of MVC behave incorrectly. The bug was quickly fixed in trunk, but it was determined that backporting it to the 2.4 branches was not an option and since the issue was easily worked around, we decided to just put the modified MVC code in our repositories. Unfortunately, due to my mistake, the workaround didn't actually make it in neither 2.4.2.1 or 2.4.2.2 releases. I have just committed the 2-line fix (revisions r138087 and r138088) to the 2.4 branches and we should expect to see 2.4.2.3 released soon. My apologies for this omission to everybody who expected to see the bug fixed in 2.4.2.2.

If your MVC application throws an exception similar to this one:

System.ArgumentNullException: Argument cannot be null.
Parameter name: type
  at System.ComponentModel.TypeDescriptor.GetConverter (System.Type type) [0x000ab] in /usr/src/tmp/mono-branch/mcs/class/System/System.ComponentModel/TypeDescriptor.cs:437 
  at System.Web.Mvc.DefaultModelBinder.BindModel (System.Web.Mvc.ControllerContext controllerContext, System.Web.Mvc.ModelBindingContext bindingContext) [0x000ba] in /usr/src/tmp/mono-branch/mcs/class/System.Web.Mvc/System.Web.Mvc/DefaultModelBinder.cs:186 
  at System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.GetParameterValue (System.Web.Mvc.ControllerContext controllerContext, System.Web.Mvc.ParameterDescriptor parameterDescriptor) [0x00090] in /usr/src/tmp/mono-branch/mcs/class/System.Web.Mvc/System.Web.Mvc/ControllerActionInvoker.cs:119 
  at System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.GetParameterValues (System.Web.Mvc.ControllerContext controllerContext, System.Web.Mvc.ActionDescriptor actionDescriptor) [0x00021] in /usr/src/tmp/mono-branch/mcs/class/System.Web.Mvc/System.Web.Mvc/ControllerActionInvoker.cs:128 
  at System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.InvokeAction (System.Web.Mvc.ControllerContext controllerContext, System.String actionName) [0x00099] in /usr/src/tmp/mono-branch/mcs/class/System.Web.Mvc/System.Web.Mvc/ControllerActionInvoker.cs:162 

• Download the fixed binary from here, unpack it and replace the copy found in your 2.4 GAC either manually or by issuing the following command as user who has GAC folder write rights:

  gacutil -i System.Web.Mvc.dll

• Take System.Web.Mvc sources from the Mono 2.4 (or 2.4.2) branch, compile it (with 2.4+ compiler)
• Use System.Web.Mvc.dll from Microsoft .NET distribution - it will work just fine with Mono

ASP.NET MVC sources in the Mono 2.4 and 2.4.2 branches are identical to the upstream source except for the workaround. Trunk version of ASP.NET MVC is identical to upstream.