I have ported a Xamarin Studio app that use Xamarin Forms, iOS/Android to Visual Studio for Mac. All my other apps build fine but for some reason this specific app doesn't want to build at all, it is stuck half way in the build process.
Last month, Microsoft announced the release ofVisual Studio for Mac: a full-featured development environment to help developers on the Mac create apps, games, and services for mobile, cloud, and web. It’s natively designed for macOS, so both the design – from the toolbar to the file dialogs – and the developer workflow should feel right at home to Mac users. It is also a best-in-class advanced C# code editor – with IntelliSense and a refactoring experience that includes a preview of the proposed code changes.
Mobile and web developers working on the Mac will appreciate the additional features that Visual Studio for Mac provides C# developers, and developers that have used Visual Studio on Windows will feel instantly at home with the familiar solution explorer and menu options. Visual Studio for Mac features first-class support for NuGet – the .NET package manager – which provides access to thousands of prepackaged code libraries; you can also code in F#, and yes, C# 7 features are fully supported!
Cross-platform capabilities don’t end there – Visual Studio for Mac shares the same solution format as its Windows counterpart. Teams with developers on both Mac and Windows can open and work on the same projects, sharing code across platforms and apps. Built-in version control makes it easy to work with small or large teams, on local and remote Git repositories (including GitHub and BitBucket).
Mobile Development
Visual Studio for Mac has a heritage in Xamarin Studio, and thus supports cross-platform application development for iOS, Android, and macOS with Xamarin. By installing the iOS and Android SDKs, you can build cross-platform mobile apps using C#, with complete access to the underlying native APIs (including tvOS and watchOS).
It includes drag-and-drop user interface designers for both iOS and Android, giving you the ability to interactively create native iOS Storyboards and Android XML layouts. Or, if you prefer, you can use Xamarin.Forms XAML to create a re-usable cross-platform user-interface (with a real-time preview option). Whichever option you end up choosing, apps using Xamarin always render native controls and run at native speed.
To make getting started with mobile development easy – we also announced the preview of Xamarin Live Players for iOS and Android, enabling you to start experimenting in seconds. Just pair the app on your phone with Visual Studio for Mac using a QR code and instantly see your app running and you can make live edits along the way. When you want to build complete apps, you can use the simulators and emulators available or test on real phones. Visual Studio for Mac can even help you build and deploy your finished apps to the App Store and Google Play–the archive for publishing build option will guide you through the code-signing and uploading process.
Web and Cloud
Visual Studio for Mac isn’t just for mobile, however. The web editing experience on Visual Studio for Mac comes directly from code ported from Visual Studio (on Windows). It includes support for developing .NET Core apps and ASP.NET Core back-ends, which can be deployed to Windows, Linux, or on Microsoft Azure. The editor also supports full HTML, CSS, and JavaScript syntax highlighting and IntelliSense for your web app’s front-end.
To build for the cloud, the Connected Services feature helps add Azure functionality to mobile apps without leaving the IDE, and .NET Core web apps can be published directly to Microsoft Azure. There’s more cool stuff in the pipeline, including Azure Functions support and the ability to deploy using Docker containers, both of which are currently available in preview.
Games too
Additionally, Visual Studio for Mac includes the ability to build games using Unity, the most popular gaming engine around. You can directly edit your Unity scripts with the same world-class C# editing experience, including full syntax highlighting and IntelliSense. Debugging is also just a button away, with full debugger support for Unity games. For mobile games, you can also use Xamarin for access to native gaming APIs like SpriteKit, or cross-platform options like CocosSharp and UrhoSharp.
Try it and let us know what you think
Get started by downloading the Community edition of Visual Studio for Mac for free to begin developing ASP.NET Core web apps, Unity games, and Android and iOS mobile apps, all in C#!
We’re very proud of this release and we want to hear what you think – please, send us your feedback! Leave a comment below, use Visual Studio for Mac’s “Report a Problem” or “Provide a Suggestion” dialog (within the Help menu) to provide feedback, or join the conversation in the Visual Studio for Mac community forums.
Last year at Build, we launched Visual Studio for Mac, our native macOS IDE for developers building cloud, web, and mobile applications using .NET. Updates have been rolling out at a steady pace ever since, and we’re excited to announce the release of Visual Studio for Mac version 7.5. We have also continued to bring more Visual Studio 2017 code to the Mac.
Our mission has always been to delight developers, and we have something for everyone in this release. You can get started by downloading the new release or updating your existing install to the latest build in the Stable channel.
Here are some of the features we’re most excited to share with you:
- ASP.NET Core developers now have full Razor editor support. We’ve also introduced JavaScript and TypeScript support.
- For iOS developers, we added WiFi debugging support for iOS and tvOS applications. We also improved the iOS provisioning system.
- Android developers will enjoy the new Android SDK manager built right into the IDE, as well as a device manager to keep track of all your devices and emulators
- Xamarin.Forms developers will enjoy an improved XAML editing experience
- Cloud developers have support for Azure Functions development using .NET Core.
- We support .NET Core 2.1 RC and C# 7.2.
- Code-styling rules can be configured per-project using .editorconfig files.
- A preview of Team Foundation Version Control support for Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio Team Services is now available.
We’re also shipping improvements to performance and stability, accessibility, and multi-language support, along with fixes for a number of bugs reported by our vibrant developer community. You can find the full list of changes in our release notes.
ASP.NET Core development with Razor, JavaScript, and TypeScript Editor Support
We partnered with the Roslyn and Visual Studio JavaScript tooling teams to reuse Razor, JavaScript, and TypeScript editor source code, bringing the editing experiences you know and love from Visual Studio 2017 to the Mac.
Official Razor support includes IntelliSense and syntax highlighting in .cshtml files
Our JavaScript editor has been rewritten to provide the core editor experience you expect, including IntelliSense, enhanced colorization, and brace completion. We’ve also added TypeScript editing support, which shares the same IntelliSense and colorization as our JavaScript experience.
Use .editorconfig files to Set Code Style Rules in Projects
One of my favorite features is finally here: .editorconfig
Visual Studio for Mac will now format your code following the conventions specified in the .editorconfig file. This will allow you to set your coding style, preferences, and warnings for your project; making it simpler for code that you contribute to other projects to follow the practices of those projects.
Xamarin.Forms Development
We now ship Xamarin.Forms templates that take advantage of .NET Standard Libraries.
Working with XAML just got better, too, with IntelliSense improvements providing better support for self-closing elements and more completions.
Android Development with Xamarin
On the Android side of the house, we added an integrated Android Device Manager dialog, eliminating the need to rely upon 3rd-party tools for device and emulator management. You can find this under Tools > Device Manager.
Visual Studio For Mac Professional
iOS Development with Xamarin
![Build Build](https://developer.telerik.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/MonacoCommands.png)
iOS fans will enjoy a streamlined Entitlements editor experience, making it a breeze to add capabilities and services to your iOS apps.
Simply open the Entitlements.plist file and jump right in! Not only that, our new Automatic Signing experience makes deploying your application to devices very simple. In the Signing section of the Info.plist editor, you’ll find using Automatic Signing makes the burdens of manually tracking your entitlements and provisioning devices things of the past.
Building Serverless solutions with Azure Functions
Our new Azure Functions templates now support the Azure Functions .NET Core SDK, empowering you to build, debug, and test Azure Functions locally. In addition, item templates provide guidance for building functions using the most common triggers, enabling you to get up and running with new functions in minutes.
After creating a new Azure Functions project, right-click and select Add > Add Function, then choose your favorite function from the template dialog.Check out our documentation for a walkthrough to create your first Function in Azure.
.NET Core 2.1 RC and C# 7.2
Visual Studio for Mac version 7.5 now supports .NET Core 2.1 RC. Major improvements include faster build performance, better compatibility with .NET Framework, and closing gaps in both ASP.NET Core and EF Core. You can read more about the .NET Core 2.1 RC release in the announcement blog post. Support for the newest C# release, version 7.2, is also available today.
Working with your source with Team Foundation Version Control
One of our most popular feature requests has been to add support for Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) to access source saved in Team Foundation Server or Visual Studio Team Services. We heard you loud and clear! Today, we’re previewing a new extension to do just that.
Visual Studio Build Action
To install the extension, navigate to Visual Studio > Extensions… in the Visual Studio for Mac menu and search the gallery for “team foundation”. We support Get, Commit (with associated work items), version history, and more.
![Studio Studio](/uploads/1/2/6/4/126446668/163114254.png)
Feedback
We hope you’ll find Visual Studio for Mac version 7.5 as delightful as we do. Let us know what you think! Your feedback helps us improve our products and better understand your needs as a developer.
Please let us know about issues via Help > Report a Problem. You’ll be able to track your issues and receive updates in the Visual Studio Developer Community.
You can also provide product suggestions via the Help > Provide a Suggestion menu and vote on suggestions at the Visual Studio for Mac UserVoice site.
Miguel de Icaza
Miguel de Icaza, Distinguished Engineer, Mobile Developer Tools @migueldeicaza Miguel is a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft, focused on the mobile platform and creating delightful developer tools. With Nat Friedman, he co-founded both Xamarin in 2011 and Ximian in 1999. Before that, Miguel co-founded the GNOME project in 1997 and has directed the Mono project since its creation in 2001, including multiple Mono releases at Novell. Miguel has received the Free Software Foundation 1999 Free Software Award, the MIT Technology Review Innovator of the Year Award in 1999, and was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 innovators for the new century in September 2000. |