I recently built and installed IronAHK from source. IronAHK is an open-source re-implementation of AutoHotKey for Mono. (it also runs on Microsoft’s .NET) A tutorial is available at, but I found it a little sparse (the page is completely blank) so I was on my own. Building and installing from source was fairly straightforward, but there were a few hassles along the way.
First, I downloaded the latest source from the GitHub repository using git:
git clone https://github.com/polyethene/IronAHK
cd IronAHK
After running the Makefile, I received the following error:
/bin/sh: xbuild: not found
You need mono-xbuild to build IronAHK, which is not installed by default on Ubuntu 10.10. It can be easily installed with:
sudo apt-get install mono-xbuild
Attempting to run the Makefile again, I received the following warning and errors:
Warnings:
/media/cat-files/software/linux-packages/IronAHK/IronAHK.sln (default targets) ->
(Build target) ->
/media/cat-files/software/linux-packages/IronAHK/Rusty/Rusty.csproj (default targets) ->
/usr/lib/mono/3.5/Microsoft.Common.targets (ResolveAssemblyReferences target) ->
/usr/lib/mono/3.5/Microsoft.Common.targets: warning : Reference 'System.Windows.Forms' not resolved
Core/Gui/HotkeyBox.cs(3,14): error CS0234: The type or namespace name `Windows' does not exist in the namespace `System'. Are you missing an assembly reference?
Core/Common/KeyboardHook.cs(6,14): error CS0234: The type or namespace name `Windows' does not exist in the namespace `System'. Are you missing an assembly reference?
Core/Gui/Dialogs/Input.cs(4,14): error CS0234: The type or namespace name `Windows' does not exist in the namespace `System'. Are you missing an assembly reference?
Core/Gui/Dialogs/Progress.cs(3,14): error CS0234: The type or namespace name `Windows' does not exist in the namespace `System'. Are you missing an assembly reference?
Core/Gui/Dialogs/Splash.cs(2,14): error CS0234: The type or namespace name `Windows' does not exist in the namespace `System'. Are you missing an assembly reference?
After some searching, I found a comment on another blog post about installing IronAHK that indicates that you also need libmono-winforms2.0-cil:
sudo apt-get install libmono-winforms2.0-cil
If you are on a partition that requires execute permissions, you will need to give the setup script execute permissions: (thanks to Liam Thompson for this)
sudo chmod +x Deploy/bin/Release/setup.sh
Finally, I was able to successfully build and install using:
make
sudo make install
You can then execute IronAHK scripts from the command line by executing:
ironahk [--gui]
You can bind keyboard shortcuts to execute your scripts using your window manager as usual.
TL;DR:
Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat
(updated thanks to Liam Thompson)
sudo apt-get -y install git mono-xbuild libmono-winforms2.0-cil
git clone https://github.com/polyethene/IronAHK
cd IronAHK
sudo chmod +x Deploy/bin/Release/setup.sh
make
sudo make install
Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal
(updated thanks to Liam Thompson and Repkam09)
sudo apt-get -y install git mono-xbuild libmono-winforms2.0-cil libmono-microsoft-visualbasic8.0-cil mono-vbnc
git clone https://github.com/polyethene/IronAHK
cd IronAHK
sudo chmod +x Deploy/bin/Release/setup.sh
make
sudo make install
Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot
I haven’t tested this full script, but when I tried to rebuild IronAHK from the latest source, I needed a new dependency (mono-gmcs). I don’t know if that dependency was not included with 11.10 or if it’s a new dependency added to IronAHK.
sudo apt-get -y install git mono-xbuild libmono-winforms2.0-cil libmono-microsoft-visualbasic8.0-cil mono-vbnc mono-gmcs
git clone https://github.com/polyethene/IronAHK
cd IronAHK
sudo chmod +x Deploy/bin/Release/setup.sh
make
sudo make install
Brendon Robinson's Blog 
Champion! Your motto is true. Thanks heaps.
Minor, but for some reason, at the end I got:
/bin/sh: Deploy/bin/Release/setup.sh: Permission denied
make: *** [install] Error 126
so I had to:
sudo chmod +x Deploy/bin/Release/setup.sh
sudo Deploy/bin/Release/setup.sh install
Thanks Liam! In my case I didn’t need to do that, likely because I unpacked to an NTFS partition that considers all files to have execute permissions. Many people will need that additional step.
I just tried this on Ubuntu 11.04 and everything worked as expected except I also had to install the Visual Basic 2005 packages for Mono (“libmono-microsoft-visualbasic8.0-cil” and “mono-vbnc”) to fix the error:
Core/Disk.cs(329,47): error CS0234: The type or namespace name `FileIO’ does not exist in the namespace `Microsoft.VisualBasic’. Are you missing an assembly reference?
Thanks!
Thanks Repkam09!
Likewise on Natty. Thanks!
Hmm, but has anyone managed to get IronAHK to do anything useful? It doesn’t seem like core functionality like hotkeys are actually working in the freshest source?
At the time I built, hot keys seemed to be working, but I did have issues with sending some keystroke combinations. There seems to be a lot of functionality still missing from IronAHK.
Linux Mint 16
sudo apt-get -y install git mono-xbuild libmono-winforms2.0-cil libmono-microsoft-visualbasic8.0-cil mono-vbnc mono-gmcs
git clone https://github.com/polyethene/IronAHK
cd IronAHK
make
sudo make install
sudo chmod +x Deploy/bin/Release/setup.sh
sudo ./Deploy/bin/Release/setup.sh install
works as far as that goes
Not for me I got the error messages:
E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock – open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it?
I have seen this error many times and there is always some other updater or package manager running at the same time. Is it possible that some other package manager was using those files?
Awesome, thank you!
I haven’t yet tried it, but will soon.
I was recommended this blog via my cousin. I am not certain whether this publish is written by him as
no one else realize such specific approximately my problem.
You’re amazing! Thanks!