A few months ago I heard “Visual Studio is coming for Mac.” At first, I did not believe the person who told me. But once I gained confidence in their sensibilities, I was thrilled. And now that it has arrived … well, it really isn’t Visual Studio for Mac. This is Visual Studio Code.
Leverage the power of Visual Studio 2017 and the debugger to build high-performance Android and/or iOS apps and games in C++, share C++ libraries to target both mobile platforms and Windows, or write once and run across all mobile platforms with Xamarin and C++. Visual Studio for Mac should also provide support for C++ development, using compilers available on the system (gcc, Clang, etc.) 3. Forum: How do I get c++ to work on Read more » Vote Up 0.
The idea was great. I was going to dump my slow Windows 7 box containing my decked out Visual Studio 2012 — extensions and all — and my dev onto my super fast 4K iMac. All without conceding to Boot Camp; but it looks like that time has not yet come.
Visual Studio Code is an integrated development environment (IDE) that runs on Mac — as well as Linux and Windows (for some reason). But Visual Studio it is not.
I gave it a good three hours of testing: the install was easy, until I needed to update Mono. And opening the first project from GitHub was easy as well. Here is what I found:
Pros
Light Weight
Yep, it is totally light. It is all about get in, code, commit and leave. Which is nice, because if you are used to Visual Studio, you know it can be very heavy. Visual Studio Code takes much less time to launch, and auto-complete is way faster.
JSON Settings
Love the fact that all settings for the IDE are project-based and JSON files.
Search
The search interface is really nice. It is responsive and supports Regex.
Cons
Language Support
For the supported languages — JSON, CSS, HTML, {less}, and Node.js — intellisense and autocomplete work. And it’s fast. But for other languages, like PHP, all you get is syntax highlighting.
Mono
Well it’s pretty cool they support Mono, but my testing intellisense and autocomplete are not supported. It is .NET for Mac, for God’s sake. Why would you not put more effort into the code support here?
Build my Code!
You can only run Mono and Node.js projects. Which is pretty confusing, as the language support is not great for Mono, but you can debug for it. This was a freebie for them. All they do is call your locally installed mono compiler, which does the work. It is not likely, even with the really cute debug icon, you will be doing any debugging.
It was a bit of a let down, but it is still neat. The actual use cases must be pretty limited. I’m picturing a small team, or working on a very small component quickly. But I do not see Visual Studio Code replacing the developer’s dedicated IDE. Nor do I see it being used in any sustained capacity.
So why does it exist? I think it’s mostly a marketing play. It certainly was developed well. But likely it was the the path of least resistance, to see how their all-important “Developer Tools” focus was going to fit into Linux and Mac. It also builds confidence in Microsoft’s reconciliation with other applications. If I am Microsoft, I’m watching the download numbers and reviewing all feedback to simply gauge the reality of people using it. If you can get developers across any platform addicted to an IDE, then you have an “in” for the entire VSO suite.
But I also get this weird feeling, which I also got at Build 2015, that Microsoft and Xamarin are up to something. Although on so many levels they are competitors, they go out of their way to work together. And the more Microsoft places products on the same machine as Xamarin tools, the better. Conspiracy, much?
So I do not get to dump my Dell just yet, and at this pace I might fully move to a Cloud IDE before I do Visual Studio Code. I think it’s worth a try. But after a few hours you will get the gist. And honestly, if you have the Git client installed and need to make a quick change to your code before bed, it’s great.
Feature image via Flickr Creative Commons.
Today we are announcing the release of Visual Studio for Mac version 7.6. Our focus with this release has been to improve product reliability in various areas, with a special focus on the code editing experience. We have also made several fixes that improve IDE performance. Finally, we’ve extended our support for Azure functions with the addition of new templates and the ability to publish your function to Azure from within the IDE.
This post highlights the major improvements in this release. To see the complete list of changes, check out the Visual Studio for Mac version 7.6 Release Notes. You can get started by downloading the new release or updating your existing install to the latest build available in the Stable channel.
Improving reliability of the Code Editor
We’ve focused our attention on improving the reliability of the code editor in Visual Studio for Mac and have addressed several issues with the code editor. In particular, we want to highlight the following fixes to issues many of you have reported:
- We fixed an issue where Quick Fix menu items don’t display if source analysis is disabled.
- We also addressed a widely reported issue where tooltips wouldn’t disappear.
- We fixed an issue where IntelliSense seems to fail, resulting in red “squiggles” continuing to hang around in the editor even though there were no errors.
- We improved IntelliSense for F# developers. There was an issue where you could not use “.” for autocompletion, but we’ve fixed this and various other F# IntelliSense issues.
- We made improvements to JavaScript syntax highlighting.
Improving performance of the IDE
One of the top reported bugs in previous releases has been performance issues in the editor. Having a fast and reliable code editor is a fundamental part of any IDE and an important part of any developer’s workflow, so we’ve made some improvements in this area:
- We improved tag-based classification for C# with PR #4740 by reusing existing Visual Studio for Windows code, which should improve typing performance in the editor.
- We now support no-op restore of NuGet packages when opening a solution. This change speeds up NuGet restores on solution load.
We’ve also added many more small fixes that improve startup time and reduce memory consumption of the IDE.
Richer support for Azure Functions
Azure functions are a great way to quickly get up and running with a serverless function in just a few minutes. With this release, we have introduced new templates for you to choose from when creating your Azure Functions project:
These new templates allow you to configure access rights, connection strings, and any other binding properties that are required to configure the function. For information on selecting a template, refer to the Available function templates guide.
C++ On Visual Studio For Mac
Another major part of the Azure functions workflow that we are introducing with this release is publishing of functions from Visual Studio for Mac to the Azure Portal. To publish a function, simply right-click on the project name and select Publish > Publish to Azure. You’ll then be able to publish to an existing Azure App Service or use the publishing wizard to create a new one:
For information on publishing to Azure from Visual Studio for Mac, see the Publishing to Azure guide.
Share your Feedback
Addressing reliability and performance issues in Visual Studio for Mac remains our top priority. Your feedback is extremely important to us and helps us prioritize the issues that are most impacting your workflow. There are several ways that you can reach out to us:
X Code
- Use the Report a Problem tool in Visual Studio for Mac.
- We are enhancing the Report a Problem experience by allowing you to report a problem without leaving the IDE. You’ll have the ability to automatically include additional information, such as crash logs, that will help our Engineering team narrow down the root cause of your report more effectively. This will be introduced in an upcoming servicing release to 7.6 that will be available in the Stable channel within the next few weeks.
- You can track your issues on the Visual Studio Developer Community portal where you can ask questions and find answers.
- In addition to filing issues, you can also add your vote or comment on existing issues. This helps us assess the impact of the issue.