
Visual Studio for Mac - insulanian
https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-mac/
======
0x0
I find the naming "Visual Studio for Mac" pretty deceptive, since apparently
it is not anything like the win32 VS environment, but instead based on Xamarin
Studio. Even the tagline is deceptive: "The IDE you love, now on the Mac".

I would guess this won't let you build/debug win32 or winforms or wpf
applications, or install any .vsix extensions from the visual studio
marketplace (of which there are lots of useful ones, such as this one to
manage translations -
[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=TomEngle...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=TomEnglert.ResXManager)
) - correct me if I'm wrong, but if I can't install my .vsix extensions, this
is not "the IDE you love, now on the Mac".

~~~
RajenK
Hi, Rajen Kishna here, Product Manager on Visual Studio for Mac. Our goal with
Visual Studio for Mac is to create a native IDE for Mac users with workloads
that make sense on macOS. That means "desktop app" development will target
macOS and Visual Studio (on Windows) can be used to target Windows.

The core of the IDE definitely has a heritage in Xamarin Studio, but this
release has brought in so much more with .NET Core/ASP.NET Core development
for web apps/services, Unity support for game development and cloud
integration with directly publishing your web apps/services and previews of
Docker and Azure Functions coming very soon.

Extensions is definitely another area we're looking to align more over time.
Currently, there is an extensions framework, but you're right that it's
different from the one used on Windows.

Definitely keep the feedback coming, we're listening and looking to act and
prioritize accordingly!

~~~
BugsJustFindMe
> _Definitely keep the feedback coming_

> _Our goal with Visual Studio for Mac is to create a native IDE for Mac
> users...That means "desktop app" development will target macOS._

Feedback: This target ghettoizing mentality seriously hurts my workflow. I
just want to cross compile to target Windows. I want to make Win32 MFC C++
executables without having to boot into an operating system (Windows 10) that
I never want to use on my development laptop for _anything_ other than running
MSVC. It's literally just a set of headers and object files that will, in even
the very worst case, produce more applications targeting your platform. Why
does Microsoft continue to keep them walled off?

~~~
EpicEng
>Why does Microsoft continue to keep them walled off

Isn't the answer obvious? How many MFC devs are there working primarily in OSX
or linux? It has to be tiny, even if they had the ability to do so. Great, I
can compile; still need to boot up Windows to run it. My userbase is still
100% windows users. We still use Windows on every PC in my company. So who
cares? What's the value proposition here?

~~~
flukus
> Isn't the answer obvious? How many MFC devs are there working primarily in
> OSX or linux?

None, because you can't, the same reason you don't see many iOS developers
using windows. I don't know if there are many people that want to work that
way or if it's worth supporting, but your current argument is circular
reasoning at it's finest.

~~~
vsl
Yet Microsoft supports, and was investing heavily in, iOS development in
Visual Studio on Windows...

~~~
pjmlp
As long as you have a Mac and an iOS device to connect to.

~~~
EpicEng
I know, total PITA. Why can't I run my iOS app on Windows?! Screw you M$!

...

------
jot
Almost 10 years since I exchanged emails with Steve Ballmer about this:
[https://medium.com/@jot/me-and-steve-ballmer-
in-2007-68456a5...](https://medium.com/@jot/me-and-steve-ballmer-
in-2007-68456a554d41)

~~~
Joeri
I'm surprised he even replied at all, given that he must have received several
thousand emails that day, and this one was ... rather long.

~~~
simonswords82
I wonder if it's Steve responding at all.

His PA probably co-managed his inbox and would read and respond to this type
of e-mail. Perhaps they also only forward on emails to Steve's "priority"
inbox if they're worthy of his time?

~~~
toong
Would his PA reply to emails on a Sunday at 11:32 PM ?

~~~
simonswords82
Perhaps this email was worthy of Steve's time :)

------
fotbr
Since there's a PM here from Microsoft, I've got a couple questions regarding
the requirement to "sign in with your Microsoft account":

With all your branding changes over the years, what's considered a Microsoft
account today? My old Hotmail account, that existed from the days before
Microsoft bought Hotmail? I think it's still alive, but I haven't logged in in
the better part of a decade to find out. The accounts created over the years
for various Xbox machines? I think those are still around, but I doubt I could
get into them at this point. The "Live" account I had to create for MSDN many
years ago? Once that job and associated need for MSDN ended I've not logged in
to see if it's still around.

Which one(s) should I try to find login information for to use?

Furthermore, why must I sign in in the first place for the free version? I can
understand signing in to associate the install with a paid version with extra
features, but I see no reason to require it for free versions without any paid
features.

~~~
BugsJustFindMe
> _My old Hotmail account, that existed from the days before Microsoft bought
> Hotmail? I think it 's still alive, but I haven't logged in in the better
> part of a decade to find out._

I have some bad news for you... This is literally the reason I signed up with
gmail when it came out. Microsoft used to have a log-in-within-30-days-or-we-
delete-everything policy for Hotmail. Maybe it was even 90 days.

~~~
umeshunni
It was 30 days as I found out the hard way sometimes in the early 2000s while
traveling with no internet access for 2 months.

~~~
bredren
I too, lost data from this policy.

------
srcmap
I used to be a big VB, VC++ fan boy a long time ago. 1995 :-) Have since move
on....

Tried built a few opensource apps with VS once a year for the past few years
and found that I can't even compile a single Windows open source packages from
github, sourceforge after weeks of trying.

The code might claim to be able to build with VS10, VS12. The dependency
libraries will need completely different VS version of .xml, .proj, .sln build
systems.

I challenge the PM of VS product try to build a few popular MS projs such as
python, VLC, or anything in
[http://opensourcewindows.org/](http://opensourcewindows.org/). Document the
process of building the app and dependence library. Compare that to the
process of try to build that same packages in Mac (with brew) or in Linux.

In Linux, for all the packages I like play with. "./configure && make" handle
most of the the build in a few minutes. Even easier on Ubuntu with apt-get
source/build commands. Very similar process in Mac.

Even linux kernel, I can build it easily with pretty much the same 1-2
commands for the past 20 years.

~~~
koyote
Not to distract from your point but compiling something on Linux has always
been a massive pain due to dependencies.

I often have to run configure multiple times and hunt down the correct version
of whatever library it needs before re-running it and finding yet another
library that it can not find (it gets even worse if you actually have the
library installed but it's not in the search path...)

~~~
vetinari
Compiling something on Linux is a piece of cake, even with dependencies,
compared to Windows.

In Linux, the dependencies are just apt/dnf/yum away. In Windows, you have to
build them, including their dependencies. There is no ./configure, no cmake
config, it either has VS solution file (if you are lucky, it will even work
with your version), or not. If you have the dependency library somewhere, you
have to edit that project file tell the VS manually where it is. If you
weren't lucky with an existing sln file, it's time to make your own.

Reading README to learn about dependencies and running configure with some
flags is fine, compared to that.

~~~
Avery3R
Windows has cmake...

~~~
vetinari
The point I was trying to make, that it will not help much. Most packages you
are going to build do not support it yet.

------
satysin
I really wish Microsoft had made UWP cross-platform. Would be pretty amazing
if I could use UWP/C# to target Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS and Android
properly. With UWP being limited to just Windows I don't see it ever being a
success.

~~~
eberkund
Why? UWP is the future of application development on Windows. That's like
saying Cocoa will never be a success. Also if you can make UWP apps, you can
make Xamarin apps which are cross platform (for mobile at least).

~~~
flukus
UWP doesn't allow enough system access to ever be the future of Windows. At
best it's the future of a locked down toy version of windows.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
> _UWP doesn 't allow enough system access to ever be the future of Windows._

That's kind of the point. Most apps don't need unfettered system access and
many (most?) app authors aren't capable of writing an app that's secure
anyway; one of the biggest attack vectors today is through apps.

~~~
flukus
UWP won't replace win32 until it can handle all apps, not just most apps.

------
kraig911
Is this more than just Xamarin? I'm sorry -- I tried last time and that was
the impression I got. I know it says it has asp.net core but can I truly build
.net web services based apps now without parallels?

~~~
RajenK
Hi, Rajen Kishna here, Product Manager on Visual Studio for Mac. It definitely
is more than Xamarin, we brought in support for creating web apps and services
with .NET Core/ASP.NET Core, game development with Unity and C#, and cloud
integration with publishing your web apps/services to Azure directly from
within the IDE. We're also announcing some preview features coming very soon,
including Docker and Azure Functions support, as well as targeting IoT devices
like Android Things. Lots of goodies to be had!

~~~
kraig911
Sweet thanks for the feedback - this is definitely a step in the right
direction.

------
delegate
Does it support C++ ? To me, "Visual Studio" is about C++ development and I
miss a similarly powerful C++ IDE on the Mac.

From what I can see, it only supports C# (and family), so what good is it to a
C++ / OSX dev ?

~~~
santaclaus
Xcode is ok for C++ (not nearly as many features as Visual Studio on Windows,
though).

~~~
delegate
I used to think that way too until I opened my project in Visual C++ (with the
Visual Assist addon).

The productivity boost was so great that I've decided to never use Xcode for
C++ again and do all my development in a VM if I have to.

Best alternative is Qt Creator and it's probably what I'm going to use for my
next C++ project on the mac. Many people recommend CLion, but I've never
really managed to actually use it (and it isn't free and runs on the jvm).

Still VC++ is a powerful tool for C++ development, which is probably quite
hard to beat, so having it on the mac would make using Windows totally
optional :).

~~~
beagle3
VSCode is constantly improving. I haven't used Qt Creator in years, so I can't
compare, but ... for my uses it is way ahead of PyCharm and WebStorm; I
suspect it rivals QtCreator by now (as long as you're not writing a Qt based
project)

------
holydude
The only problem I have with MS's ecosystem is their love to have a lot of
concepts and name for everything. I am literally lost and I do not know what
.NET/<whatever> is what and how it is used.

So is this just Xamarin repackaged ?

~~~
educar
This is no different from the apple ecosystem. Their programming is filled
with so many jargons (talking of desktop UI development here)

~~~
holydude
No idea you might be right but I have no problem navigating in
Ruby/Go/JavaScript ecosystems. While with MS I have the feeling they produce
new tech and new names every week.

~~~
pvg
Seems mostly a matter of getting used to it. What's a 'gem'? And a 'bundler'?
A rake, a rack, a rail, a tilt, a merb?

Make sure to browserify your webpack, take a moment, don't react, have a mocha
before, gulp, bowser comes to get you. Wait no, it's fine, it's just bower.

~~~
pitaj
Those are specific module names, in the case of JS at least. Not really
comparable with framework-specific jargon. A better comparison would be redux
concepts like "action", "store", and "reducer".

~~~
pvg
No and no.

------
yread
Microsoft Build is becoming an event where hell freezes over lately. VS on
Mac, Linux on Windows, open source asp.net and .net, SQL Server on Linux

~~~
s73ver
It's not really VS on Mac, though. It's just a rebadged Xamarin Studio. I
can't really call that amazing.

~~~
RajenK
Hi there, Rajen Kishna here, Product Manager on Visual Studio for Mac. If you
haven't tried it out yet, I would definitely say check out the released
version of Visual Studio for Mac. It has support for mobile apps with Xamarin,
but adds so much more to build web apps and services with .NET Core and even
games with Unity. We also announced preview support coming very soon for
Docker and Azure Functions and are definitely planning on adding more over
time.

~~~
dang
> _Hi, Rajen Kishna here, Product Manager on Visual Studio for Mac_

Hi, a minor procedural point (I'm a mod here): it's good to say this once in a
thread, but repeating it after that breaks the feeling of normal conversation,
so could you please not? Experience shows that users figure it out.

~~~
akoumis
I haven't seen his other comments yet so the heads up helped me understand the
context of his comments better.

~~~
dang
Yes, there's a tradeoff with redundancy but overall it lowers the signal/noise
ratio.

------
BugsJustFindMe
It would be really nice to have a microsoft rep in here to answer questions.
Because what I really want is visual studio that can build C++ win32 MFC
executables without having to run Windows in a virtual machine. Can it do
that? I don't know.

~~~
spongo2
Hi! I'm Steve the C++ dev manager in Visual Studio. No, VS for Mac does not
currently have C++ support but thanks for the feedback.

One thing you could do is register your opinion here:
[https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/563332-visual-
stud...](https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/563332-visual-studio-for-
mac/suggestions/17141708-support-c-in-visual-studio-for-mac)

~~~
BugsJustFindMe
Hey Steve, the website definitely makes it seem like it does. You should send
a message to whoever manages that.

See: [http://imgur.com/a/exQvj](http://imgur.com/a/exQvj)

------
zamalek
> Xamarin

Isn't this just MonoDevelop? Or have Microsoft added secret sauce to the mix?

~~~
4lch3m1st
More than that, if they're willing to deliver a port of Xamarin/MonoDevelop to
Mac and call it VS, it's at least funny that they won't do that for Linux.
There is no actual need for that, but since they're refactoring Xamarin...

~~~
migueldeicaza
We would like more people to speak up about this.

We need your votes, your voices to make the case that we should release all
this goodness on Linux.

Little know fact: some of the engineers on the Visual Studio for Mac team are
still developing it in Linux itself. So it already works there.

At this point it is a matter of hearing your voices. Speak up often :-)

~~~
pritambaral
_Where_ do we speak up about this? I remember when Xamarin Studio was released
on Mac, and I tried to look for a Linux build, there wasn't a place where I
could ask about it, except a Reddit AMA. Hacker News discussions around
release time of a non-Linux product don't seem like a good place to ask about
Linux support either.

And I'm pretty sure I'm one of few who even hopes for it anymore.

~~~
migueldeicaza
Please support us here:

[https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-
stud...](https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio-
ide/suggestions/18433768-visual-studio-for-linux-os)

It would be great if in addition to voting, you can articulate some reasons
for why you care, add a personal touch, in the end, we would love to know what
our users care the most about.

------
nobleach
I sincerely would LOVE to have an F# development IDE that didn't ask me to
install Mono. I don't have anything against Mono, per se, I just want to see
that Microsoft officially supports it across the three major platforms.

------
fleshweasel
They're promoting this as a new dev environment for .NET Core, but there's
still ZERO tooling for Razor. I tried starting a simple example project and
the .cshtml files didn't even have any syntax highlighting, let alone
syntax/type checking.

I don't know how you work on cross-platform ASP.NET for this long and still
not have the tooling for your templating engine ported.

~~~
thom
Maybe the devs are busy switching project format every couple of months?

------
vetinari
Again, online installer only. Did something recently change something, that
made difficult to make full, offline installer?

If yes, JetBrains didn't notice, because they are still able to do that for
their products.

~~~
pvg
There are manual install instructions that come with the downloader, you can
download and install all the components yourself.

~~~
vetinari
And the offline media build failed, just after 18GB download:

    
    
        [Exception] System.AggregateException: One or more errors occurred. ---> System.IO.FileNotFoundException: /Users/<username>/Library/Caches/XamarinInstaller/Universal/downloads/repository-10.xml does not exist

~~~
pvg
That looks like maybe you installed in the wrong order? Seemed to work ok for
me.

~~~
vetinari
How in the wrong order? Exactly as described on the page.

There is not much wiggle room, launch the installer with the switches, select
a directory where to build the installer, go. There's not much that you can
reorder.

Of course, on the second try, although the downloader caches whatever it
downloads, it does not use that for the next round, it will throw it away and
redownload everything. So 36 GB of traffic later, I gave up.

~~~
pvg
Oh I see, you found yet another set of instructions. I meant these: start the
regular installer, pick manual installation from the app menu, it gives you a
readme with direct download links. Download the components you want (none seem
to add up to 18 gb, for me at least), install and run.

------
NDT
I don't understand. I've been using VS on Mac for the past 3 months to develop
C# applications for a class of mine. Was that just a beta? What's so different
about this?

~~~
jrowley
Visual Studio vs Visual Studio Code. 2 different applications with really
similar names. Visual Studio Code is lighter weight - more similar to
Sublime/Atom.

~~~
bpicolo
They released this Visual Studio like a year ago, too. Might have been a
"preview" or something? Free for all to download though.

Edit: Yeah, this is just their GA release

------
keithly
Release notes for today's update: [https://www.visualstudio.com/en-
us/news/releasenotes/vs2017-...](https://www.visualstudio.com/en-
us/news/releasenotes/vs2017-mac-relnotes)

------
blowski
Anyone know what support is planned for other languages? e.g. Go, Ruby, and
PHP.

~~~
migueldeicaza
Yes, we will be adding support for more languages.

We will be doing that with the Language Server Protocol effort that was
started at Microsoft and is currently in use by VSCode and other languages:

[http://langserver.org/](http://langserver.org/)

Miguel

------
legohead
Crashes during install process for me. :\

Looks like during Xamarin installation: /Users/USER/Downloads/Install Visual
Studio.app/Contents/MacOS/Install_Xamarin - Terminating app due to uncaught
exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '-[NSScrollView heightAnchor]:
unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x6080003c0870'

Bummer.

~~~
therzok
Do you have macOS at least 10.11?

~~~
carreau
Does not matter. If it's incompatible with the OS it should say so and not
crash.

~~~
vyedin
we shipped a fix for this Friday :)

~~~
carreau
<3

------
mb_72
More good news from the MS / Xamarin camp. A few years ago I 'bet the farm' on
using Xamarin for Mac to develop a Mac version of our PC application (with
shared code in a PCL); since that time Xamarin (and then MS/Xamarin after the
buyout) have rarely failed to impress. Kudos to the team.

------
kapuru
Any .NET MVC developers here? I always wanted to learn ASP MVC, but never did
because I was scared of the deployment situation on Linux. Has anything
changed in that regard? Would you say deploying a .NET web app works almost as
smooth on Linux as let's say a node.js app?

~~~
mihular
I've deployed some webapi projects using docker. Very straightforward. I
assume it should work nice if deployed directly.

------
perseusprime11
Visual Studio Code is the way to go on Mac.

~~~
james-skemp
Just installed Visual Studio for Mac (I've been using VS Code for a while on
Windows and Mac) and first blush I'd agree. But to be determined after actual
usage.

Code is definitely targeted to be lightweight, and it shows. I also am a fan
of Code's look, versus the Mac wrapper around VS for Mac.

I'll probably give VS for Mac a try via a .NET Core tutorial, but for day-to-
day JS dev I'll probably be keeping with VS Code.

------
mixedCase
Again? I've seen the announcement for its release three times on HN.

And before someone mentions it, no I'm not confusing it with VS Code. I mean
"Visual Studio for Mac", the Xamarin Studio fork.

~~~
RajenK
Hi there, we actually released the product today, so it's generally available
and fully supported. Hope that clears things up!

------
dohboy
Same strategy as always. Rebrand current products and call it new. This is not
Visual Studio as known from Windows but Xamarin Studio rebranded. Title should
be Microsoft release Xamarin update...

~~~
Sammi
In fairness it seems like a pretty big update.

------
zzbzq
Coincidentally I was just using this & Xamarin Studio on mac today. I didn't
realize VS Mac had released, I already had the beta.

So far I don't like it as much! Not sure what features are here I actually
care about as I'm just using Mono. The pads no longer make sense in VS for
Mac. I just have debug pads open all the time. I can't really tell when I've
stopped debugging. There's weird buttons on the pads that do nothing. Not sure
why all the clutter is here, Xamarin Studio had this stuff figured out.

------
rcarmo
I've been waiting for this for a while. Only trouble so far is that the
installer comes up in the wrong locale for me (it ignores the language
ordering in Preferences and displays the installer in my secondary/input
language, not English, unlike fully native apps).

~~~
vyedin
that's been fixed since :)

------
avenoir
Is anybody doing professional development on .NET using VS for Mac? All this
time i thought it was just Xamarin tools, but it looks like it actually has
.NET Core project templates too. This has been the only thing that kept me
away from Macs as a .NET dev.

------
jhasse
This is still using GTK+ (3?), right?

How did they manage to integrate the buttons in the title bar with it?

~~~
therzok
Visual Studio for Mac's shell code is written in gtk+ 2. We have supporting
code in gtk+ to allow mixing gtk widgets with native widgets.

But the glue code isn't used here, because there is another interesting
mechanism at play. The root window created by gtk on macOS is actually an
NSWindow (see GdkQuartzWindow), thus you can use Cocoa APIs on the window. We
just set the title visibility to hidden and set the native titlebar widget.

~~~
jhasse
Nice! Thanks for the explanation.

Do you plan to port to GTK 3 in the future? Does version 2 even have HiDPI
support?

~~~
therzok
We have some glue code to workaround lack of retina/hidpi support in gtk+.

Yes, having Gtk UI running on Gtk 3 is something we want to have at some
point.

~~~
0xFFC
This is the most unbelievable thing. Even WSL was kinda okay to imagine. But
Microsoft and Gtk?

I thought after buying Xamarin they would replace Gtk part.

~~~
tmsldd
Unbelievable :D

------
jhwhite
Is this VS? Or just Xamarin? Could I do Python development on it like I can
with Win VS?

------
JohnnyConatus
Is VS for Mac recommended for typescript development? I'm using VS code right
now.

------
baltcode
Is there any way to run this/download a compatible version for OSX 10.9?

~~~
therzok
Visual Studio for Mac requires OSX 10.11+.

~~~
baltcode
I know ... am I the only one facing this predicament?

I have an early 2009 Mac Pro with OSX 10.9. I don't want to break anything so
I haven't updated to Sierra but more and more apps are incompatible with my
computer now.

~~~
wila
Run it in a VM, that way you can keep your main machine on 10.9 and experiment
in the VM with things like this.

I guess you already know that 10.9 is no longer supported, so you might want
to consider to at least update to 10.10.

------
relyks
Will this allow you to make cross-platform Windows Forms applications?

~~~
judah
Nope. Windows Forms is a UI technology tied to Windows itself.(It's
implemented as wrapper over WndProc and Windows Common Controls.)

Windows Forms is not cross platform, and VS for Mac doesn't change this.

VS for Mac is intended to build cross platform web apps, console apps, and
mobile apps with Xamarin.

~~~
floatboth
Windows Forms is implemented in Mono. It's… buggy, but it works.

~~~
tmzt
Is that the version using winelib? I believe there is now native OSX support
in wine in addition to x11drv. Could the Mono version be ported?

~~~
hexxington
No. The Winelib implementation fizzled over a decade ago. Mono's WinForms
implementation is managed, invoking a cleanroom C libgdiplus.so/dlyib for GDI+
calls

------
gaza3g
I'm currently working on an MVC5 project on .NET 4.6.1 using VS2015 on
Windows.

Can I load my solution on VS for Mac and have it work out of the box(restoring
nuget packages...etc)?

------
EGreg
Can this do PHP and Javascript / Web Development?

Objective C? Swift?

------
wkirby
Is the installer in Chinese for anyone else?

~~~
vetinari
There is something fishy going on, for me, it was in Russian.

------
alex_suzuki
Any chance we're going to get a Hololens development environment for the Mac
anytime soon?

------
Clobbersmith
Is there a reason why the installer is in french? My preferred language is set
to english.

~~~
vyedin
No, you're not alone, but we've fixed it since. The new installer builds will
choose the correct language.

------
gaius
Bring back CodeWarrior I say

------
genzoman
first rate development experience on mac. MS is slaying it lately.

~~~
s73ver
Check again. It's not the same Visual Studio that's on Windows. It's just a
rebadged Xamarin Studio.

------
DeepYogurt
Hit download and get a popup for a free 60 day course. No thanks.

------
nexoman
Wanted to try it but installer crashes on OSX Yosemite 10.10.5

~~~
vyedin
This has been fixed - but be aware that VS for Mac requires 10.11 (el cap) as
minimum

------
bitmapbrother
Does Visual Studio for Mac have the same functionality as Visual Studio for
Windows? If not then they should really stop confusing customers by rebranding
a product that had nothing to do with Visual Studio for Windows.

------
exabrial
I don't even know what's real anymore...

------
minhoryang
So beautiful!

------
itsdrewmiller
Let me know when this supports .NET 4.

------
jbmorgado
I can't really understand the full depth from the announcement, but to me this
looks like something that already existed for a few years, Xamarin.

What are the diferences between this product and Xamarin for MacOS (something
that already existed)?

------
mcjon77
No lie, when I saw the title of this thread for a few seconds I was confused
and wanted to check my calendar. I kept thinking "Is this April 1st?".

