27 ms·

Visual Studio for Mac Preview

397 points by clbrook 10y ago

clbrook 10y ago
Perhaps a bit premature. This link is live at: https://www.visualstudio.com/ https://www.visualstudio.com/ But...404ing from there too.
sremani 10y ago
On Live they just announced it few minutes ago. Its official!!! Visual Studio on Mac :P
- clbrook 10y ago
  Just saw it too! So exciting :)
- bphogan 10y ago
  I'm really confused - because when I go to the site, it doesn't really say "Visual Studio" - it references tooling and Visual Studio Code. So am I missing something?
  - Grazester 10y ago
    Apparently is not really Visual Studios(as in its not a port of the Windows IDE known by the same name). http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/microsoft-is-going-to-pretend-to-release-visual-studio-for-mac/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/micros...
mattstrayer 10y ago
https://www.visualstudio.com/visual-studio-pre-release-downloads/ https://www.visualstudio.com/visual-studio-pre-release-downl... ^^ download link
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- iamed2 10y ago
  This was the link I successfully used to install.
  - karolist 10y ago
    I really expected this to be behind a registration or survey form but no - just a straight link to a dmg no questions asked, can't believe it's Microsoft.
kentosi 10y ago
Given the title, and the fact that this site is currently down, I can't help but think that this could've be the cruelest yet funniest April Fool's joke ever.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
clbrook 10y ago
Link change: https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-mac/ https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-mac/ Moderator, can you update?
- chocks 10y ago
  Just an FYI.. The download button doesn't seem to work. Seems some files on this page has a CORS policy violation: "Access to Font at 'https://c.s-microsoft.com/static/fonts/segoe-ui/west-european/normal/latest.woff' https://c.s-microsoft.com/static/fonts/segoe-ui/west-europea... from origin 'https://c.s-microsoft.com' https://c.s-microsoft.com' has been blocked by CORS policy: The 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header has a value 'https://www.microsoft.com' https://www.microsoft.com' that is not equal to the supplied origin. Origin 'https://www.visualstudio.com' https://www.visualstudio.com' is therefore not allowed access."
johnhattan 10y ago
FWIW, this is actually a rebranding of Xamarin Studio, so it only handles C# and F#. It's a bit puzzling, as VSCode seemed to be the tool that was going to take over all the Xamarin Studio features.
- rpeden 10y ago
  XS/MonoDevelop worked with Visual Basic last time I tried it, so perhaps VS for Mac will as well?
- wmccullough 10y ago
  If I had to really take a guess here, this is what I'd speculate. This is only the first step for Visual Studio Mac. The next will be to begin bringing feature parity to the Mac version (My gut feeling is that VB.NET won't make the leap, but with Roslyn, maybe I'm wrong). I feel this isn't stated enough. VSCode, albeit made by Microsoft, goes way beyond Microsoft's core interests. Given that you can now enable language support for around 470-ish languages, I don't think that their game here is to be a replacement for anything. I have an even crazier suspicion about what VSCode is really about. So if you've lived with Visual Studio for years, you know that it's been COM based for a looonnnnggg time (since inception). I think VSCode serves two interests. The first interest is to bring non-Microsoft users in the fold with the hopes that they may go "This ain't so bad, maybe I'll give other stuff a try". I think the second is that they need a playground to figure out how to, excuse me here, "unfuck" the core architecture of Visual Studio. If they can write suitable replacements for core functionality, let them bake and mature for some time, then BOOM! they can replace the VS components. Like I said, just a crazy opinion based on what I've seen so far.
  - vonklaus 10y ago
    I agree, but would add that I think their core motivation is to drive developers to microsoft azure. I am sure they believe they would love mac users to buy more MS software but targeting non-ms devs this hard seems like they want to compete with AWS && google. AWS UX is a dumpster fire. Azure was quite nice from what I can tell. I love VS code and am a mac user. I also strongly dislike AWS as it is extremely complex and annoying. If there was amazing tooling, I would consider switching from digital ocean to azure.
kennysmoothx 10y ago
This is confirmed to be Xamarin Studio rebranded as VS for mac.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mirekrusin 10y ago
I like this tea cup - alternative to j.
simonh 10y ago
Can we change the title to "Xamarin Studio for Mac renamed Visual Studio for Mac".
- ChristianGeek 10y ago
  "The IDE formerly known as Xamarin Studio for Mac." Or maybe just a graphic symbol.
- mwfunk 10y ago
  Why?
fzn 10y ago
This raises a question: What compilers/toolchains did MS Macintosh Business Unit use during the second part of the 1990s?
- mikestew 10y ago
  Until someone with a better memory and more direct knowledge comes along, I'm going to guess that they used Apple's tools. In the early 2000s, I know that's what they used because I had buddies over in the Mac BU.
- andyjohnson0 10y ago
  My guess would be Macintosh Programmer's Workshop [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Programmer%27s_Workshop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Programmer%27s_Works...
  - vetinari 10y ago
    At the time, nobody really used MPW, maybe except Apple. Mostly Metrowerks CodeWarrior was used.
    - porsupah 10y ago
      Not /strictly/ nobody - the 3DO version of The 11th Hour was crafted under MPW, using Norcroft C. But yes, CodeWarrior certainly dominated, particularly as the 90s closed.
      - vetinari 10y ago
        Obviously, I meant Joel Spolky's definition of "nobody" - Please understand that I'm talking about large trends here, and therefore when I say things like "nobody" I really mean "fewer than 10,000,000 people," and so on and so forth. Strictly speaking wrt this definition, if MPW had 10M users, it would be a runaway success. But nobody cared, even when it became free.
    - robterrell 10y ago
m_fayer 10y ago
Xamarin studio is in many ways lighter and more asynchronous than vs proper, so there is some upside. But it's missing visual studio's absolutely killer feature, which is the superb c# repl. Add that and my windows virtual machine will start gathering a lot of dust.
- mixedCase 10y ago
  I've used the Mono REPL (in my distro the binary is called "csharp") with no issues for trying out code.
  - m_fayer 10y ago
    The Visual Studio REPL is much more polished and feature-rich. It has basically the same code editor and intellisense as what you get when working on a C# file. Multi-line history with editing, file-system aware imports, and a lot of other small features all add up to make it possible to do rather complex things in the REPL.
    - yareally 10y ago
      I only have one gripe with the Visual Studio REPL...it kind of lacks the 'P' part of REPL. If you execute something, it doesn't print it out unless you do Console.WriteLine(). Otherwise, it's pretty nice. Not sure why they went that route with the C# REPL, because the F# one prints out results after execution.
- sandyarmstrong 10y ago
  We just released Workbooks 1.0 [0]. You can use it on both Windows and Mac, and run your code in a variety of platforms. Try a Console workbook for something quite similar to (and in some ways more powerful than) the Visual Studio REPL. Workbooks go beyond the REPL and can include rich content so that they can be saved and shared. But I use it every day for random REPL tasks that I used to use `csharp` for. [0] https://developer.xamarin.com/releases/interactive/interactive-1.0.0/ https://developer.xamarin.com/releases/interactive/interacti...
bsharitt 10y ago
I know that there's a lot of comments about this just being a rename of Xamarin Studio, but hopefully this is pointer in the direction Microsoft may go in eventually joining the two IDEs and in a major version or two we might actually have a Visual Studio on Windows and Mac(and maybe Linux?) that are pretty close to each other.
- ksubedi 10y ago
  It's not necessarily a rename of Xamarin, Xamarin Studio for mac was built on top of Monodevelop ( http://www.monodevelop.com/ http://www.monodevelop.com/ ) and they are using the same thing as base for Visual Studio as well which is why they are all so similar. Im sure microsoft will keep adding features and make it have feature parity with the windows version.
nkjoep 10y ago
I don't trust any website using display table-cell just to achieve vertical alignment, sorry.
- vonklaus 10y ago
  Yeah, this has been 99.99% of the reason people don't trust Microsoft. Someone says this in every single MS flame-war thread and is the reason many people (myself included) lost faith in MS and switched to OS X.
  - bpicolo 10y ago
    display: table-cell is the reason 99.99% of people don't trust Microsoft?
    - vonklaus 10y ago
      sorry, thought the satire was obvious.
      - PerfectElement 10y ago
        I was following you, but the "my self included" part gave it a more serious tone.
curtisspope 10y ago
UPDATED WITH SCREENSHOTS I have it and have installed it,Initial thoughts: ( I use VS Pro every day BTW) here are some screenshots https://www.dropbox.com/sh/nbsetrwnoirbhr0/AAAuF0FHR2nACBaftY3xwNoMa?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/sh/nbsetrwnoirbhr0/AAAuF0FHR2nACBaft... -Great first step, I can only see raw code and code behind views -No visual Layout view yet, but its greyed out in the View Menu, when selecting .aspx File (Source|Changes|Blame|Log|Merge) -Looks like its so far, meant for lightweight projects -Git integration is much simpler to setup/use
- BukhariH 10y ago
  Does it feel responsive whilst typing? I'm used to Sublime and when I tried VS Code it felt kind of laggy.
  - curtisspope 10y ago
    so far yes, no lag either :)
PerfectElement 10y ago
Does it support ASP.NET MVC 5?
- mixedCase 10y ago
  Well I've been trying to work with MVC 5 in MonoDevelop and the integration seems to be there, but I get crashes when opening Razor markup files (*.cshtml). So... maybe?
ld00d 10y ago
I'm installing it right now, and I'm getting admin access requests -- way more than I should.
- evilduck 10y ago
  The Intel HAXM Android emulator requires kernel extensions. I'm puzzled why anything else needs admin though.
  - joncp 10y ago
    It's Microsoft's habit. Even Outlook for Mac requires admin access (which scares the crap out of me).
    - duaneb 10y ago
      Microsoft was never good at avoiding installers.
DonHopkins 10y ago
How well does this support Unity development and debugging?
- adanto6840 10y ago
  Is my number one question as well, as I use Unity/MonoDevelop combo all day every day. And, as much as Mono crashes on Mac, it's still a pretty darn solid IDE overall, especially coming from bare-bones tools like Sublime & TextMate. I downloaded this a bit ago and the install just finished; thus far (<5 minutes invested, admittedly) I'm at a loss as to how I'd even open the Unity project code, much less get the integration setup. Hopefully someone more familiar with VS & Unity on Windows may be able to provide some guidance...
  - jensvdh 10y ago
    Very curious about this as well? Was able to open my Unity project in Visual Studio for Mac but not sure how to "link" it with the editor.
  - doyouevensunbro 10y ago
    Just move to VSCode and save your sanity (sorry, I'm not a fan of MonoDevelop): https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/runtimes/unity https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/runtimes/unity Jetbrains is also working on their C# IDE, hoping it supports Unity soon: https://www.jetbrains.com/rider/ https://www.jetbrains.com/rider/
  - OskarS 10y ago
    If you install OmniSharp, it gives you all the linting, compiling and code completion you need. I develop for Unity using Vim and OmniSharp, and it works great. I haven't tried Sublime with OmniSharp, but a colleague of mine reports that it works great, he doesn't miss MonoDevelop at all. The only thing you're missing, really, is the debugging stuff in MonoDevelop, but I hardly ever used that anyway.
scosman 10y ago
Was hoping for Objective C support when I saw it. Would love to get rid of Xcode.
- santaclaus 10y ago
  If you are using Objective C what are the problems with Xcode?
- ChristianGeek 10y ago
  Objective C support? Never going to happen. Swift support? Unlikely, but a stronger possibility thanks to its cross-platform support. I wouldn't hold my breath though.
  - rhodysurf 10y ago
    Objective C is just as open as Swift is I think
    - WorldMaker 10y ago
      Swift is FLOSS, Apache Licensed and built and collaborated on GitHub: https://github.com/apple/swift https://github.com/apple/swift Objective C has not had an official open source release, so far as I know. ETA: Arguing of course how close the gcc/clang implementations of Objective C may or may not be to the Xcode compilers, of course.
      - armadsen 10y ago
        Xcode uses Clang/LLVM to compile Objective-C (and used gcc before adopting LLVM). To my knowledge there's nothing closed source involved in the compiler. I had Clang/LLVM compiling Objective-C on Linux a long time ago. Visual Studio for Windows has been able to compile Objective-C for about a year (see https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/bridges/ios https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/bridges/ios).
  - randomdata 10y ago
erichardson30 10y ago
When trying to open up a project I'm getting : Error trying to load the project 'Users/user/Projects/Project/ProjectName/ProjectName.csproj': Version string portion was too short or too long Anyone know why this would be? This runs fine on windows VS
donatj 10y ago
I'm excited but it errors out for me on the Java installer failing to open a DMG it downloaded. Seems odd that it requires Java at all…
rajathagasthya 10y ago
I've never used Visual Studio, so I'd like to know how easy and reliable it is to work on a remote Python code on your local Visual Studio. I've tried using sshfs with vim to do that, but it's too slow and hinders my productivity. I'm wondering how other folks here do similar stuff, preferably without changing my editor from vim to something else (I've been suggested to use atom-sync).
mtw 10y ago
I'm looking for macbook pro alternatives... so wondering, do you think one day it would be posible to have Visual Studio for PC compile iOS projects?
- joenot443 10y ago
  As in, native ones written in Swift which utilize Foundation and UIKit? I would say almost certainly not.
  - mtw 10y ago
    Makes sense for Swift. What about ReactNative apps?
    - colinramsay 10y ago
      RN iOS apps still need XCode so it seems unlikely again.
- WorldMaker 10y ago
  The new Visual Studio Mobile Center announced support for cloud builds and CI of iOS projects, which is probably the closest we'll get: hiring Mac build machines in Azure to do the work for us.
- ickler8 10y ago
  That is currently an Apple issue. iOS projects have to be compiled on Apple hardware.
bni 10y ago
So Microsoft names all their products Visual Studio now. Before it used to be that everything was called Windows. So its just like the 3 versions of Skype that Microsoft offers.
duckworth 10y ago
I went to install it and it seems to be forcing me to download another full Android SDK to a private location without the option the specifying the existing Android SDK location that I already have set up. A quick search show this as an open issue that is 5 years old https://bugzilla.xamarin.com/show_bug.cgi?id=859 https://bugzilla.xamarin.com/show_bug.cgi?id=859 I lost interest already.
- wmccullough 10y ago
  I agree with you totally. I bounce between macOS and Windows for development, and I wish they'd take a better approach with dependency management. I hope that the approach with the VS Mac installer ends up going the way of VS 2017 on Windows. I love the fact that I can choose say ".NET development" in the installer and turn off unneeded packages.
- m_st 10y ago
  Same thing here. I don't care about Android development, just about Xamarin for iOS and Mac and .NET Core. I cancelled the installation as it tries to install some Java and Android SDK which I don't want. Better luck next time.
  - bitshiffed 10y ago
    It sounds like you're done messing with it; but if you're not, you can install it without the Android/Java stuff. If you let the installer start running, but deny it elevation to write to your system directories when prompted, it will throw up a "manual install" dialog with instructions and links to download the individual components separately. Then you can download just the IDE, the Mono framework, and the Xamarin.Mac or Xamarin.iOS pieces if you want them.
    - kalleboo 10y ago
      You can also just go straight into the app menu and there's a "Show manual installation instructions" item there that pulls up the same dialog
- deleted 10y ago
sakopov 10y ago
So this isn't just for Mac apps? Are there templates for .NET Core console and web apps?
- manicgeek 10y ago
  Yes, there are templates for .NET Core Console and ASP.NET Core apps
ppcdeveloper 10y ago
Can anyone guestimate how much this thing will actually cost?
bluetwo 10y ago
I kind of feel like we are being astro-turfed by Microsoft. * Google joins .NET Foundation as Samsung brings .NET support to Tizen * Visual Studio for Mac Preview * Visual Studio 2017 Release Candidate * Microsoft announces the next version SQL Server for Windows and Linux * Announcing .NET Core 1.1 * Microsoft Becomes Linux Foundation Platinum Member * Visual Studio Mobile Center Preview * Announcing the Fastest ASP.NET Yet, ASP.NET Core 1.1 RTM (And before you tell me I'm wrong because I can't PROVE it, let me remind you I said I FEEL like we are being astro-turfed.)
- komali2 10y ago
  I thought the same thing when I hit HN this morning, good lord so many MS posts. On the other hand isn't there some sort of event today? Connect() or something? That would result in tons of announcements.
- rpeden 10y ago
  It's only happening because Microsoft's Connect conference started today. A lot of new and updated things were announced during the keynote, and stories about them showed up here on HN shortly afterward. Since Connect is Microsoft's developer conference, a lot of things announced there tend to end up on HN. The same things tends to happen when there's a Google and Apple conference or event. No astroturfing involved; just HN members watching the keynote and posting things they think the community will find interesting.
  - dguaraglia 10y ago
    Exactly. This is what happened last year around the same time, when they announced new versions of TypeScript, and the introduction of VSCode, etc. etc. etc. Not complaining, it's great to see what Microsoft has been up to summarized in a single day or two, rather than a trickling of news that I might lose over a span of a year. It's a bit spammy, but since they moved to supporting Open Source, the announcements really check a lot of boxes for me.
  - bluetwo 10y ago
    Good to know, thanks.
nsxwolf 10y ago
Kind of confused by what this actually is. Can I do .NET development from a Mac on this? As in, working in a ".NET Shop", use OS X as a development machine instead of Windows?
- dguaraglia 10y ago
  You could, but you don't get the same experience or UI kit as you do with Visual Studio. Which is fine if you want to develop cross-platform apps, or you just care about developing apps for macOS.
stuartd 10y ago
Doesn't install on OSX 10.7 - not exactly a surprise, but there aren't any system requirements on the download page that I can see.
- xamcb 10y ago
  Hey, Good catch! I will request that we add system requirements to out page. I am going to suggest they are added to https://developer.xamarin.com/releases/vs-mac/preview/vs-mac-preview1/ https://developer.xamarin.com/releases/vs-mac/preview/vs-mac... Disclosure: I work at Microsoft on Xamarin
wdr1 10y ago
I'm dubious. I've been burned twice by MS pushing a product on the Mac platform & then yanking support. In both cases the answer was effectively "Well, switch to Windows." I genuinely hope Microsoft is really changing. But there is a lot of bad history associated with the company. It takes a long time to change the culture of a company, and a long time to regain user's trust.
- Delmania 10y ago
  It's a rebranding of Xamarin Studio, they're not going to stop support for it any time soon. Even if they did, just use Code.
gwbas1c 10y ago
The installer crapped out on my clean macOS VM. :( My development Mac is pretty sensitive to the version of mono installed, so I don't want to screw around with it.
pritambaral 10y ago
I'm just waiting for it to be available on Linux. And no, MonoDevelop isn't the same thing. I'd like to be able to develop Android apps using Xamarin on Linux, but MonoDevelop provides me no way to even install Xamarin Android.
andy 10y ago
My feedback on Visual Studio for Mac: I created a basic mobile application. I didn't write any code - just started with a new application and clicked run. When I launched it for iOS it worked. When I launched it for Android it crashed immediately. OK...
- xamcb 10y ago
  Hey! I work on the Xamarin team at Microsoft, and I would like to help out on this! Are you able to send me the crash logs or application output? Thanks!
  - andy 10y ago
    Sure here are the logs: [art] Not late-enabling -Xcheck:jni (already on) [AndroidRuntime] Shutting down VM [AndroidRuntime] FATAL EXCEPTION: main [AndroidRuntime] Process: com.greenrobot.testapp, PID: 3218 [AndroidRuntime] java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to get provider mono.MonoRuntimeProvider: java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to find application Mono.Android.Platform.ApiLevel_23 or Xamarin.Android.Platform! [AndroidRuntime] at android.app.ActivityThread.installProvider(ActivityThread.java:5156) [AndroidRuntime] at android.app.ActivityThread.installContentProviders(ActivityThread.java:4748) [AndroidRuntime] at android.app.ActivityThread.handleBindApplication(ActivityThread.java:4688) [AndroidRuntime] at android.app.ActivityThread.-wrap1(ActivityThread.java) [AndroidRuntime] at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1405) [AndroidRuntime] at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:102) [AndroidRuntime] at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:148) [AndroidRuntime] at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:5417) [AndroidRuntime] at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Native Method) [AndroidRuntime] at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:726) [AndroidRuntime] at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:616) [AndroidRuntime] Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to find application Mono.Android.Platform.ApiLevel_23 or Xamarin.Android.Platform! [AndroidRuntime] at mono.MonoRuntimeProvider.attachInfo(MonoRuntimeProvider.java:38) [AndroidRuntime] at android.app.ActivityThread.installProvider(ActivityThread.java:5153) [AndroidRuntime] ... 10 more [AndroidRuntime] Caused by: android.content.pm.PackageManager$NameNotFoundException: Xamarin.Android.Platform [AndroidRuntime] at android.app.ApplicationPackageManager.getApplicationInfo(ApplicationPackageManager.java:304) [AndroidRuntime] at mono.MonoRuntimeProvider.attachInfo(MonoRuntimeProvider.java:32) [AndroidRuntime] ... 11 more [Process] Sending signal. PID: 3218 SIG: 9 Email me at andy@greenrobot.com if you have any questions and don't want to post them publicly.
joestr87 10y ago
I was like what the hell is Mac Preview?

397 points by clbrook 10y ago

Perhaps a bit premature. This link is live at: https://www.visualstudio.com/ https://www.visualstudio.com/ But...404ing from there too.

sremani 10y ago

On Live they just announced it few minutes ago. Its official!!! Visual Studio on Mac :P

clbrook 10y ago
Just saw it too! So exciting :)
bphogan 10y ago
I'm really confused - because when I go to the site, it doesn't really say "Visual Studio" - it references tooling and Visual Studio Code. So am I missing something?
- Grazester 10y ago
  Apparently is not really Visual Studios(as in its not a port of the Windows IDE known by the same name). http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/microsoft-is-going-to-pretend-to-release-visual-studio-for-mac/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/micros...

mattstrayer 10y ago

https://www.visualstudio.com/visual-studio-pre-release-downloads/ https://www.visualstudio.com/visual-studio-pre-release-downl... ^^ download link

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
iamed2 10y ago
This was the link I successfully used to install.
- karolist 10y ago
  I really expected this to be behind a registration or survey form but no - just a straight link to a dmg no questions asked, can't believe it's Microsoft.

kentosi 10y ago

Given the title, and the fact that this site is currently down, I can't help but think that this could've be the cruelest yet funniest April Fool's joke ever.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

clbrook 10y ago

Link change: https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-mac/ https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-mac/ Moderator, can you update?

chocks 10y ago
Just an FYI.. The download button doesn't seem to work. Seems some files on this page has a CORS policy violation: "Access to Font at 'https://c.s-microsoft.com/static/fonts/segoe-ui/west-european/normal/latest.woff' https://c.s-microsoft.com/static/fonts/segoe-ui/west-europea... from origin 'https://c.s-microsoft.com' https://c.s-microsoft.com' has been blocked by CORS policy: The 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header has a value 'https://www.microsoft.com' https://www.microsoft.com' that is not equal to the supplied origin. Origin 'https://www.visualstudio.com' https://www.visualstudio.com' is therefore not allowed access."

johnhattan 10y ago

FWIW, this is actually a rebranding of Xamarin Studio, so it only handles C# and F#. It's a bit puzzling, as VSCode seemed to be the tool that was going to take over all the Xamarin Studio features.

rpeden 10y ago
XS/MonoDevelop worked with Visual Basic last time I tried it, so perhaps VS for Mac will as well?
wmccullough 10y ago
If I had to really take a guess here, this is what I'd speculate. This is only the first step for Visual Studio Mac. The next will be to begin bringing feature parity to the Mac version (My gut feeling is that VB.NET won't make the leap, but with Roslyn, maybe I'm wrong). I feel this isn't stated enough. VSCode, albeit made by Microsoft, goes way beyond Microsoft's core interests. Given that you can now enable language support for around 470-ish languages, I don't think that their game here is to be a replacement for anything. I have an even crazier suspicion about what VSCode is really about. So if you've lived with Visual Studio for years, you know that it's been COM based for a looonnnnggg time (since inception). I think VSCode serves two interests. The first interest is to bring non-Microsoft users in the fold with the hopes that they may go "This ain't so bad, maybe I'll give other stuff a try". I think the second is that they need a playground to figure out how to, excuse me here, "unfuck" the core architecture of Visual Studio. If they can write suitable replacements for core functionality, let them bake and mature for some time, then BOOM! they can replace the VS components. Like I said, just a crazy opinion based on what I've seen so far.
- vonklaus 10y ago
  I agree, but would add that I think their core motivation is to drive developers to microsoft azure. I am sure they believe they would love mac users to buy more MS software but targeting non-ms devs this hard seems like they want to compete with AWS && google. AWS UX is a dumpster fire. Azure was quite nice from what I can tell. I love VS code and am a mac user. I also strongly dislike AWS as it is extremely complex and annoying. If there was amazing tooling, I would consider switching from digital ocean to azure.

kennysmoothx 10y ago

This is confirmed to be Xamarin Studio rebranded as VS for mac.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

mirekrusin 10y ago

I like this tea cup - alternative to j.

simonh 10y ago

Can we change the title to "Xamarin Studio for Mac renamed Visual Studio for Mac".

ChristianGeek 10y ago
"The IDE formerly known as Xamarin Studio for Mac." Or maybe just a graphic symbol.
mwfunk 10y ago
Why?

fzn 10y ago

This raises a question: What compilers/toolchains did MS Macintosh Business Unit use during the second part of the 1990s?

mikestew 10y ago
Until someone with a better memory and more direct knowledge comes along, I'm going to guess that they used Apple's tools. In the early 2000s, I know that's what they used because I had buddies over in the Mac BU.
andyjohnson0 10y ago
My guess would be Macintosh Programmer's Workshop [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Programmer%27s_Workshop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Programmer%27s_Works...
- vetinari 10y ago
  At the time, nobody really used MPW, maybe except Apple. Mostly Metrowerks CodeWarrior was used.
  - porsupah 10y ago
    Not /strictly/ nobody - the 3DO version of The 11th Hour was crafted under MPW, using Norcroft C. But yes, CodeWarrior certainly dominated, particularly as the 90s closed.
    - vetinari 10y ago
      Obviously, I meant Joel Spolky's definition of "nobody" - Please understand that I'm talking about large trends here, and therefore when I say things like "nobody" I really mean "fewer than 10,000,000 people," and so on and so forth. Strictly speaking wrt this definition, if MPW had 10M users, it would be a runaway success. But nobody cared, even when it became free.
  - robterrell 10y ago

m_fayer 10y ago

Xamarin studio is in many ways lighter and more asynchronous than vs proper, so there is some upside. But it's missing visual studio's absolutely killer feature, which is the superb c# repl. Add that and my windows virtual machine will start gathering a lot of dust.

mixedCase 10y ago
I've used the Mono REPL (in my distro the binary is called "csharp") with no issues for trying out code.
- m_fayer 10y ago
  The Visual Studio REPL is much more polished and feature-rich. It has basically the same code editor and intellisense as what you get when working on a C# file. Multi-line history with editing, file-system aware imports, and a lot of other small features all add up to make it possible to do rather complex things in the REPL.
  - yareally 10y ago
    I only have one gripe with the Visual Studio REPL...it kind of lacks the 'P' part of REPL. If you execute something, it doesn't print it out unless you do Console.WriteLine(). Otherwise, it's pretty nice. Not sure why they went that route with the C# REPL, because the F# one prints out results after execution.
sandyarmstrong 10y ago
We just released Workbooks 1.0 [0]. You can use it on both Windows and Mac, and run your code in a variety of platforms. Try a Console workbook for something quite similar to (and in some ways more powerful than) the Visual Studio REPL. Workbooks go beyond the REPL and can include rich content so that they can be saved and shared. But I use it every day for random REPL tasks that I used to use `csharp` for. [0] https://developer.xamarin.com/releases/interactive/interactive-1.0.0/ https://developer.xamarin.com/releases/interactive/interacti...

bsharitt 10y ago

I know that there's a lot of comments about this just being a rename of Xamarin Studio, but hopefully this is pointer in the direction Microsoft may go in eventually joining the two IDEs and in a major version or two we might actually have a Visual Studio on Windows and Mac(and maybe Linux?) that are pretty close to each other.

ksubedi 10y ago
It's not necessarily a rename of Xamarin, Xamarin Studio for mac was built on top of Monodevelop ( http://www.monodevelop.com/ http://www.monodevelop.com/ ) and they are using the same thing as base for Visual Studio as well which is why they are all so similar. Im sure microsoft will keep adding features and make it have feature parity with the windows version.

nkjoep 10y ago

I don't trust any website using display table-cell just to achieve vertical alignment, sorry.

vonklaus 10y ago
Yeah, this has been 99.99% of the reason people don't trust Microsoft. Someone says this in every single MS flame-war thread and is the reason many people (myself included) lost faith in MS and switched to OS X.
- bpicolo 10y ago
  display: table-cell is the reason 99.99% of people don't trust Microsoft?
  - vonklaus 10y ago
    sorry, thought the satire was obvious.
    - PerfectElement 10y ago
      I was following you, but the "my self included" part gave it a more serious tone.

curtisspope 10y ago

UPDATED WITH SCREENSHOTS I have it and have installed it,Initial thoughts: ( I use VS Pro every day BTW) here are some screenshots https://www.dropbox.com/sh/nbsetrwnoirbhr0/AAAuF0FHR2nACBaftY3xwNoMa?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/sh/nbsetrwnoirbhr0/AAAuF0FHR2nACBaft... -Great first step, I can only see raw code and code behind views -No visual Layout view yet, but its greyed out in the View Menu, when selecting .aspx File (Source|Changes|Blame|Log|Merge) -Looks like its so far, meant for lightweight projects -Git integration is much simpler to setup/use

BukhariH 10y ago
Does it feel responsive whilst typing? I'm used to Sublime and when I tried VS Code it felt kind of laggy.
- curtisspope 10y ago
  so far yes, no lag either :)

PerfectElement 10y ago

Does it support ASP.NET MVC 5?

mixedCase 10y ago
Well I've been trying to work with MVC 5 in MonoDevelop and the integration seems to be there, but I get crashes when opening Razor markup files (*.cshtml). So... maybe?

ld00d 10y ago

I'm installing it right now, and I'm getting admin access requests -- way more than I should.

evilduck 10y ago
The Intel HAXM Android emulator requires kernel extensions. I'm puzzled why anything else needs admin though.
- joncp 10y ago
  It's Microsoft's habit. Even Outlook for Mac requires admin access (which scares the crap out of me).
  - duaneb 10y ago
    Microsoft was never good at avoiding installers.

DonHopkins 10y ago

How well does this support Unity development and debugging?

adanto6840 10y ago
Is my number one question as well, as I use Unity/MonoDevelop combo all day every day. And, as much as Mono crashes on Mac, it's still a pretty darn solid IDE overall, especially coming from bare-bones tools like Sublime & TextMate. I downloaded this a bit ago and the install just finished; thus far (<5 minutes invested, admittedly) I'm at a loss as to how I'd even open the Unity project code, much less get the integration setup. Hopefully someone more familiar with VS & Unity on Windows may be able to provide some guidance...
- jensvdh 10y ago
  Very curious about this as well? Was able to open my Unity project in Visual Studio for Mac but not sure how to "link" it with the editor.
- doyouevensunbro 10y ago
  Just move to VSCode and save your sanity (sorry, I'm not a fan of MonoDevelop): https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/runtimes/unity https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/runtimes/unity Jetbrains is also working on their C# IDE, hoping it supports Unity soon: https://www.jetbrains.com/rider/ https://www.jetbrains.com/rider/
- OskarS 10y ago
  If you install OmniSharp, it gives you all the linting, compiling and code completion you need. I develop for Unity using Vim and OmniSharp, and it works great. I haven't tried Sublime with OmniSharp, but a colleague of mine reports that it works great, he doesn't miss MonoDevelop at all. The only thing you're missing, really, is the debugging stuff in MonoDevelop, but I hardly ever used that anyway.

scosman 10y ago

Was hoping for Objective C support when I saw it. Would love to get rid of Xcode.

santaclaus 10y ago
If you are using Objective C what are the problems with Xcode?
ChristianGeek 10y ago
Objective C support? Never going to happen. Swift support? Unlikely, but a stronger possibility thanks to its cross-platform support. I wouldn't hold my breath though.
- rhodysurf 10y ago
  Objective C is just as open as Swift is I think
  - WorldMaker 10y ago
    Swift is FLOSS, Apache Licensed and built and collaborated on GitHub: https://github.com/apple/swift https://github.com/apple/swift Objective C has not had an official open source release, so far as I know. ETA: Arguing of course how close the gcc/clang implementations of Objective C may or may not be to the Xcode compilers, of course.
    - armadsen 10y ago
      Xcode uses Clang/LLVM to compile Objective-C (and used gcc before adopting LLVM). To my knowledge there's nothing closed source involved in the compiler. I had Clang/LLVM compiling Objective-C on Linux a long time ago. Visual Studio for Windows has been able to compile Objective-C for about a year (see https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/bridges/ios https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/bridges/ios).
- randomdata 10y ago

erichardson30 10y ago

When trying to open up a project I'm getting : Error trying to load the project 'Users/user/Projects/Project/ProjectName/ProjectName.csproj': Version string portion was too short or too long Anyone know why this would be? This runs fine on windows VS

donatj 10y ago

I'm excited but it errors out for me on the Java installer failing to open a DMG it downloaded. Seems odd that it requires Java at all…

rajathagasthya 10y ago

I've never used Visual Studio, so I'd like to know how easy and reliable it is to work on a remote Python code on your local Visual Studio. I've tried using sshfs with vim to do that, but it's too slow and hinders my productivity. I'm wondering how other folks here do similar stuff, preferably without changing my editor from vim to something else (I've been suggested to use atom-sync).

mtw 10y ago

I'm looking for macbook pro alternatives... so wondering, do you think one day it would be posible to have Visual Studio for PC compile iOS projects?

joenot443 10y ago
As in, native ones written in Swift which utilize Foundation and UIKit? I would say almost certainly not.
- mtw 10y ago
  Makes sense for Swift. What about ReactNative apps?
  - colinramsay 10y ago
    RN iOS apps still need XCode so it seems unlikely again.
WorldMaker 10y ago
The new Visual Studio Mobile Center announced support for cloud builds and CI of iOS projects, which is probably the closest we'll get: hiring Mac build machines in Azure to do the work for us.
ickler8 10y ago
That is currently an Apple issue. iOS projects have to be compiled on Apple hardware.

bni 10y ago

So Microsoft names all their products Visual Studio now. Before it used to be that everything was called Windows. So its just like the 3 versions of Skype that Microsoft offers.

duckworth 10y ago

I went to install it and it seems to be forcing me to download another full Android SDK to a private location without the option the specifying the existing Android SDK location that I already have set up. A quick search show this as an open issue that is 5 years old https://bugzilla.xamarin.com/show_bug.cgi?id=859 https://bugzilla.xamarin.com/show_bug.cgi?id=859 I lost interest already.

wmccullough 10y ago
I agree with you totally. I bounce between macOS and Windows for development, and I wish they'd take a better approach with dependency management. I hope that the approach with the VS Mac installer ends up going the way of VS 2017 on Windows. I love the fact that I can choose say ".NET development" in the installer and turn off unneeded packages.
m_st 10y ago
Same thing here. I don't care about Android development, just about Xamarin for iOS and Mac and .NET Core. I cancelled the installation as it tries to install some Java and Android SDK which I don't want. Better luck next time.
- bitshiffed 10y ago
  It sounds like you're done messing with it; but if you're not, you can install it without the Android/Java stuff. If you let the installer start running, but deny it elevation to write to your system directories when prompted, it will throw up a "manual install" dialog with instructions and links to download the individual components separately. Then you can download just the IDE, the Mono framework, and the Xamarin.Mac or Xamarin.iOS pieces if you want them.
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    You can also just go straight into the app menu and there's a "Show manual installation instructions" item there that pulls up the same dialog
deleted 10y ago

sakopov 10y ago

So this isn't just for Mac apps? Are there templates for .NET Core console and web apps?

manicgeek 10y ago
Yes, there are templates for .NET Core Console and ASP.NET Core apps

ppcdeveloper 10y ago

Can anyone guestimate how much this thing will actually cost?

bluetwo 10y ago

I kind of feel like we are being astro-turfed by Microsoft. * Google joins .NET Foundation as Samsung brings .NET support to Tizen * Visual Studio for Mac Preview * Visual Studio 2017 Release Candidate * Microsoft announces the next version SQL Server for Windows and Linux * Announcing .NET Core 1.1 * Microsoft Becomes Linux Foundation Platinum Member * Visual Studio Mobile Center Preview * Announcing the Fastest ASP.NET Yet, ASP.NET Core 1.1 RTM (And before you tell me I'm wrong because I can't PROVE it, let me remind you I said I FEEL like we are being astro-turfed.)

komali2 10y ago
I thought the same thing when I hit HN this morning, good lord so many MS posts. On the other hand isn't there some sort of event today? Connect() or something? That would result in tons of announcements.
rpeden 10y ago
It's only happening because Microsoft's Connect conference started today. A lot of new and updated things were announced during the keynote, and stories about them showed up here on HN shortly afterward. Since Connect is Microsoft's developer conference, a lot of things announced there tend to end up on HN. The same things tends to happen when there's a Google and Apple conference or event. No astroturfing involved; just HN members watching the keynote and posting things they think the community will find interesting.
- dguaraglia 10y ago
  Exactly. This is what happened last year around the same time, when they announced new versions of TypeScript, and the introduction of VSCode, etc. etc. etc. Not complaining, it's great to see what Microsoft has been up to summarized in a single day or two, rather than a trickling of news that I might lose over a span of a year. It's a bit spammy, but since they moved to supporting Open Source, the announcements really check a lot of boxes for me.
- bluetwo 10y ago
  Good to know, thanks.

nsxwolf 10y ago

Kind of confused by what this actually is. Can I do .NET development from a Mac on this? As in, working in a ".NET Shop", use OS X as a development machine instead of Windows?

dguaraglia 10y ago
You could, but you don't get the same experience or UI kit as you do with Visual Studio. Which is fine if you want to develop cross-platform apps, or you just care about developing apps for macOS.

stuartd 10y ago

Doesn't install on OSX 10.7 - not exactly a surprise, but there aren't any system requirements on the download page that I can see.

xamcb 10y ago
Hey, Good catch! I will request that we add system requirements to out page. I am going to suggest they are added to https://developer.xamarin.com/releases/vs-mac/preview/vs-mac-preview1/ https://developer.xamarin.com/releases/vs-mac/preview/vs-mac... Disclosure: I work at Microsoft on Xamarin

wdr1 10y ago

I'm dubious. I've been burned twice by MS pushing a product on the Mac platform & then yanking support. In both cases the answer was effectively "Well, switch to Windows." I genuinely hope Microsoft is really changing. But there is a lot of bad history associated with the company. It takes a long time to change the culture of a company, and a long time to regain user's trust.

Delmania 10y ago
It's a rebranding of Xamarin Studio, they're not going to stop support for it any time soon. Even if they did, just use Code.

gwbas1c 10y ago

The installer crapped out on my clean macOS VM. :( My development Mac is pretty sensitive to the version of mono installed, so I don't want to screw around with it.

pritambaral 10y ago

I'm just waiting for it to be available on Linux. And no, MonoDevelop isn't the same thing. I'd like to be able to develop Android apps using Xamarin on Linux, but MonoDevelop provides me no way to even install Xamarin Android.

andy 10y ago

My feedback on Visual Studio for Mac: I created a basic mobile application. I didn't write any code - just started with a new application and clicked run. When I launched it for iOS it worked. When I launched it for Android it crashed immediately. OK...

xamcb 10y ago
Hey! I work on the Xamarin team at Microsoft, and I would like to help out on this! Are you able to send me the crash logs or application output? Thanks!
- andy 10y ago
  Sure here are the logs: [art] Not late-enabling -Xcheck:jni (already on) [AndroidRuntime] Shutting down VM [AndroidRuntime] FATAL EXCEPTION: main [AndroidRuntime] Process: com.greenrobot.testapp, PID: 3218 [AndroidRuntime] java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to get provider mono.MonoRuntimeProvider: java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to find application Mono.Android.Platform.ApiLevel_23 or Xamarin.Android.Platform! [AndroidRuntime] at android.app.ActivityThread.installProvider(ActivityThread.java:5156) [AndroidRuntime] at android.app.ActivityThread.installContentProviders(ActivityThread.java:4748) [AndroidRuntime] at android.app.ActivityThread.handleBindApplication(ActivityThread.java:4688) [AndroidRuntime] at android.app.ActivityThread.-wrap1(ActivityThread.java) [AndroidRuntime] at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1405) [AndroidRuntime] at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:102) [AndroidRuntime] at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:148) [AndroidRuntime] at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:5417) [AndroidRuntime] at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Native Method) [AndroidRuntime] at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:726) [AndroidRuntime] at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:616) [AndroidRuntime] Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to find application Mono.Android.Platform.ApiLevel_23 or Xamarin.Android.Platform! [AndroidRuntime] at mono.MonoRuntimeProvider.attachInfo(MonoRuntimeProvider.java:38) [AndroidRuntime] at android.app.ActivityThread.installProvider(ActivityThread.java:5153) [AndroidRuntime] ... 10 more [AndroidRuntime] Caused by: android.content.pm.PackageManager$NameNotFoundException: Xamarin.Android.Platform [AndroidRuntime] at android.app.ApplicationPackageManager.getApplicationInfo(ApplicationPackageManager.java:304) [AndroidRuntime] at mono.MonoRuntimeProvider.attachInfo(MonoRuntimeProvider.java:32) [AndroidRuntime] ... 11 more [Process] Sending signal. PID: 3218 SIG: 9 Email me at andy@greenrobot.com if you have any questions and don't want to post them publicly.

joestr87 10y ago

I was like what the hell is Mac Preview?