- Visual Studio Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, macOS, and Windows. Download Visual Studio Code to experience a redefined code editor, optimized for building and debugging modern web and cloud applications.
- Since I am planning to buy a new MacBook Pro (2017) and currently working on a Windows 10-device on a ASP.NET MVC (Not ASP.NET Core MVC) project for my internship, I was wondering if it is possible to continue developing the same project in Visual Studio for Mac.
- When you download Visual Studio for Mac, you’ll always get the Community edition by default. ① Under Visual Studio in the menu bar, choose the “Sign in” option.
Visual Studio dev tools & services make app development easy for any platform & language. Try our Mac & Windows code editor, IDE, or Azure DevOps for free. Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.5 is available today and includes ASP.NET Core authentication templates, support for Azure Functions 3.0, and improvements to the overall experience for those using assistive technologies.
Build is Microsoft’s annual developer conference, which makes Visual Studio and .NET the stars of the show. Build 2019 is no different: Microsoft previewed new Visual Studio features for remote work, unveiled the .NET roadmap, and launched ML.NET 1.0.
In April, Microsoft launched Visual Studio 2019 for Windows and Mac. Two notable features were Visual Studio Live Share, a real-time collaboration tool included with Visual Studio 2019, and Visual Studio IntelliCode, an extension offering AI-assisted code completion.
At Build 2019, Microsoft shared that IntelliCode’s capabilities are now generally available for C# and XAML in Visual Studio 2019 and for Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, and Python in Visual Studio Code. And IntelliCode is now included by default in Visual Studio 2019, starting in version 16.1 Preview 2. The company also previewed an algorithm that can locally track your edits — repeated edit detection — and suggest other places where you need that same change.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Visual Studio is going remote
Microsoft is experimenting with features that let developers work from anywhere, on any device. The company today announced a private preview for three such new capabilities: Remote-powered developer tools, cloud-hosted developer environments, and a browser-based web companion tool. If the future of work is remote, Microsoft wants to be ready.
The top-requested Visual Studio Live Share feature on GitHub is individual remote development. Enter Visual Studio Remote Development, an alternative to using SSH/Vim and RDP/VNC, which lets Visual Studio users connect their local tools to a WSL, Docker container, or SSH environment. Available in private preview, the tool supports C# and C++. The ability to develop against remote machines brings plenty of advantages, Microsoft says, including being able to work on a different OS than the deployment target of your application, being able to leverage higher-end hardware, and having multi-machine portability.
The next private preview lets developers provision fully managed cloud-hosted development environments on-demand. A cloud-hosted developer environment means developers spend less time onboarding new team members, moving between tasks, and installing dependencies and more time coding. The new service lets you spin up a cloud-based environment whenever you need to work on a new project, pick up a new task, or review a PR. And, of course, these environments can be connected to Visual Studio 2019 and/or Visual Studio Code.
Microsoft also announced the private preview of Visual Studio Online, a new web-based editor based on Visual Studio Code. From online.visualstudio.com, you can access your remote environments and edit code in a browser. Visual Studio Online will support Visual Studio Code workspaces, Visual Studio’s projects and solutions, as well as IntelliCode and Live Share. It means you can join Visual Studio Live Share sessions or perform pull request reviews on the go.
.NET 5 and beyond
Microsoft also announced that it is skipping .NET 4 to avoid confusion with the .NET Framework, which has been on version 4 for years. Going forward, developers will be able to use .NET to target Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android, tvOS, watchOS, WebAssembly, and more. .NET Core 3 will be succeeded by .NET 5, featuring new .NET APIs, runtime capabilities, and language features. Calling it .NET 5 makes it the highest version Microsoft has ever shipped and indicates that the company hopes it is the future for the .NET platform.
.NET Core 3 closes much of the remaining capability gap with .NET Framework 4.8, enabling Windows Forms, WPF, and Entity Framework 6. .NET 5 will build on this work, Microsoft says, combining .NET Core, .NET Framework, Xamarin, and Mono (the original cross-platform implementation of .NET) into a single platform.
![Visual Visual](/uploads/1/1/9/3/119367927/562535596.jpg)
Microsoft made three promises for .NET 5:
- Java interoperability will be available on all platforms.
- Objective-C and Swift interoperability will be supported on multiple operating systems.
- CoreFX will be extended to support static compilation of .NET (ahead-of-time – AOT), smaller footprints and support for more operating systems.
Additionally, .NET 5 will provide both Just-in-Time (JIT) and Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compilation models. JIT has better performance for desktop/server workloads and development environments. AOT has a faster startup and a small footprint, which is required for mobile and IoT devices. .NET 5 will offer one unified toolchain supported by new SDK project types and a flexible deployment model (side-by-side and self-contained EXEs).
Microsoft also shared its .NET roadmap. First, .NET Core 3 will ship in September. Next, .NET 5 will ship in November 2020, with the first preview available in the first half of 2020. Microsoft then intends to ship a major version of .NET once a year, in November.
“This new project and direction is a game-changer for .NET,” Microsoft declared. “With .NET 5, your code and project files will look and feel the same no matter which type of app you are building. You will have access to the same runtime, API, and language capabilities with each app.”
ML.NET 1.0
Private previews and roadmaps aside, Microsoft also had a notable launch today: ML.NET 1.0. Hitting general availability at Build 2019 is fitting, given that ML.NET 0.1 was introduced last year at Build 2018. You can download ML.NET 1.0 now from here.
ML.NET is an open source and cross-platform framework that runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. ML.NET’s internal version has been used for almost a decade to power Microsoft products like Powerpoint’s Design Ideas, Windows Hello, PowerBI Key Influencers, and Azure Machine Learning.
The framework makes machine learning accessible for .NET developers (samples) so they can build AI into their applications with custom machine learning models. ML.NET lets developers create and use machine learning models targeting scenarios such as sentiment analysis, issue classification, forecasting, recommendations, fraud detection, image classification, and so on. ML.NET comes prepackaged with a set of transforms for data processing, ML algorithms, ML data-types, and extensions that provide accessibility to TensorFlow for deep learning scenarios and ONNX, among others.
With ML.NET 1.0 released, Microsoft is looking forward to the next features, including:
- Improved AutoML experience for all ML scenarios
- Deep Learning support with TensorFlow and Torch
- Support for other data sources (e.g. SQL, Cosmos DB, etc.)
- Scale-out on Azure
- Improved tooling support for Model Builder and ML.NET CLI
- ML @ Scale with .NET for Apache Spark integration
- New ML Types in .NET
- Additional ML tasks
Additionally, Microsoft is introducing new ML features and tooling experiences in Visual Studio. Automated Machine Learning (AutoML), given a data set, automatically figures out the featurization and algorithm selection phase to build the best-performing models. You can leverage the AutoML experience in ML.NET using the ML.NET command line interface (CLI, available now in preview), the ML.NET Model Builder (Visual Studio extension now in preview), or by using the AutoML API directly.
Visual Studio has not always been as user-friendly on the Mac as it is on a Windows machine. Lately, however, the stable release of VS for Mac is really starting to feel like a simple, but luxurious cousin to Visual Studio 2019. Different, but related. Installation on a Mac is quick, simple, and allows you to get into coding right away - whether you are already familiar or an Apple-only dev getting into something new like Xamarin.
Visual Studio for Mac bears a striking similarity to xCode’s solution navigation feel, but brings the power of VS intellisense and an ability to focus on your code in a much cleaner looking environment. In my opinion, this brings the best of both worlds together. But don’t take my word for it: here are five reasons to give Visual Studio for Mac another go!
1. The C# Editor in Visual Studio for Mac is Completely New
Roslyn, the .NET compiler platform, is now in the Visual Studio for Mac editor - making your intellisense as powerful as its big brother on Windows. Marrying the functionality ported over from the Roslyn compiler with the (frankly, beautiful looking) simplicity of a native-feeling Mac UI editing experience gives this girl all the feels. It has full support for third-party Nuget packages for .NET Core (utilizing .NET Standard) along with Unity, Xamarin and Cocoa apps.
I didn’t notice a big difference gating my progress of a .NET Core app. At this point, I don’t know why I would switch over to a windows VM in order to build a microservice API in .NET Core at all!
Finally, I’m loving that VS for Mac now includes “Go to implementation” as an option in the latest release. Exciting! The C# experience is pretty great now.
2. CLI Developers Can Open .NET Core Projects in Terminal
Ah, the command line. Many developers love using it for .NET Core instead of the “visual” click and drag aspect of the Visual Studio IDE. At first, the use of command line programming with ASP.NET Core was the only way you could build those apps. Over time, and especially with the release of Visual Studio 2019, the File > New Project templates for ASP.NET Core apps have been baked into the install bringing a truly visual experience to that build.
For a while, it was unclear if the same command line net new project CLI functionality would be available on Mac, but I am happy to report that it is and it works beautifully! The use of the Terminal app brings that experience to you harcore command line devs.
3. Improved Build Time for Xamarin
Remember those build and deploy coffee breaks? Well say goodbye (unless you don’t want to of course). On one of my Xamarin projects I saw a super impressive 30% faster incremental build time. That’s not an insignificant improvement.
This metric is also supported by the April 2019 press release from the VS for Mac team. I used to design my development process in such a way that I could multitask to stay efficient and productive. I’m happy to report those days are gone with much improved build speeds, making the Xamarin app building process something I can say I truly enjoy.
![Visual Studio Net For Mac Visual Studio Net For Mac](/uploads/1/1/9/3/119367927/816719815.png)
4. .NET Core 3 Support Available Right Out of the Gate
Does Visual Studio 2019 have .NET Core 3 support? Yes, but that’s no reason to jump over to your Windows machine! You can use all the same, wonderful new stuff on your Apple machine, too.
In fact, I’d argue that Visual Studio for Mac is an excellent place to start learning how to build apps for .NET Core 3. With fewer small windows everywhere like it’s Windows-based cousin, VS for Mac allows for a more-focused process.
5. Robust Source Control Options
This is where some “same but different” comes into play. I find that developers coming over from Swift or Objective C development enjoy the experience of source control within Visual Studio for Mac. While there IS a difference in the process for Windows users, I don’t find it particularly difficult. Visual Studio for Mac supports Git and Subversion built into the IDE, as well as TFS with a little more effort.
I have used the Github Desktop app for source control of my folders without much issue. This is also my source control workflow for VS Code, and while it is not integrated into the IDE of VS for Mac, it’s also not a bad option. For the hardcore command line peeps, you can alternatively use Git inside the CLI tool Terminal, which is native to Apple OS. There is no learning curve here at all for developers who use command line.
Who Should Use Visual Studio for Mac?
Visual Studio for Mac is a strong choice for many developers and many use cases. Here are a few that come to mind:
- .NET users building Xamarin mobile apps that require IOS builds will benefit tremendously from having all their development on a single machine.
- Developers working with .NET Core, who love working on a Mac, and currently use a virtual machine or Bootcamp to run Visual Studio in a windows environment will benefit from not having to switch over from the Apple operating system constantly.
- Unity game developers will find VS for Mac be very intuitive option.
The last group to come over will be .NET Framework developers who have worked with Visual Studio on Windows as their only option for .NET 4.7.2 for example. Sadly no, .NET Framework cannot run on VS for Mac. However, once you are ready to start building your apps or microservices in .NET Core - check it out!
New functionality, extensions and templates are all coming this next year to Visual Studio for Mac that make living in harmony with Apple + Microsoft a real joy.
Learn More About .NET Core, Xamarin, Apple & OAuth
If you’d like to learn more about ASP.NET, Xamarin, or Apple, we’ve also published a number of posts that might interest you:
Visual Studio For Mac .net Core 3.0
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Visual Studio .net For Mac
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