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.
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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
Oct 26, 2015 In November 2016, we introduced Visual Studio for Mac, the newest member of the Visual Studio family. Visual Studio for Mac is a developer environment optimized for building mobile and cloud apps with Xamarin.
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.
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:
- 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.
Visual Studio for Mac is a .NET integrated development environment on the Mac that can be used to edit, debug, and build code and then publish an app. In addition to expected features, such as a standard editor and debugger, Visual Studio for Mac includes compilers, code completion tools, graphical designers, and source control to ease the software development process.
Visual Studio for Mac supports many of the same file types as its Windows counterpart, such as .csproj, .fsproj, or .sln files, and supports features such as EditorConfig, meaning that you can use the IDE that works best for you.Creating, opening, and developing an app will be a familiar experience for anyone who has previously used Visual Studio on Windows. In addition, Visual Studio for Mac employs many of the powerful tools that make its Windows counterpart such a powerful IDE. The Roslyn Compiler Platform is used for refactoring and IntelliSense. Its project system and build engine use MSBuild, and its source editor supports TextMate bundles. It uses the same debugger engines for Xamarin and .NET Core apps, and the same designers for Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android.
What can I do in Visual Studio for Mac
Visual Studio for Mac supports the following types of development:
- ASP.NET Core web applications with C#, F#, and support for Razor pages, JavaScript and TypeScript
- .NET Core console applications with C# or F#
- Cross-platform Unity games and applications with C#
- Android, iOS, tvOS, and watchOS applications in Xamarin with C# or F# and XAML
- Cocoa desktop apps in C# or F#
This article explores various sections of Visual Studio for Mac, providing a look at some of the features that make it a powerful tool for creating these applications.
IDE tour
Visual Studio for Mac is organized into several sections for managing application files and settings, creating application code, and debugging.
Start window
When you start Visual Studio 2019 for Mac, new users will see a sign-in window. Sign-in with your Microsoft account to activate a paid license (if you have one) or link to Azure subscriptions. You can press Skip and sign in later via the Visual Studio > Sign in menu item:
Signed-in users will see the new start window, which shows a list of recent projects, and buttons to open an existing project or create a new one:
Solutions and projects
The following image shows Visual Studio for Mac with an application loaded:
The following sections provide an overview of the major areas in Visual Studio for Mac.
Solution pad
The Solution Pad organizes the project(s) in a solution:
This is where files for the source code, resources, user interface, and dependencies are organized into platform-specific Projects.
For more information on using Projects and Solutions in Visual Studio for Mac, see the Projects and Solutions article.
Assembly references
Assembly references for each project are available under the References folder:
Additional references are added using the Edit References dialog, which is displayed by double-clicking on the References folder, or by selecting Edit References on its context menu actions:
For more information on using References in Visual Studio for Mac, see the Managing References in a Project article.
Dependencies / packages
All external dependencies used in your app are stored in the Dependencies or Packages folder, depending on whether you are in a .Net Core or Xamarin.iOS/Xamarin.Android project. These are usually provided in the form of a NuGet.
NuGet is the most popular package manager for .NET development. With Visual Studio's NuGet support, you can easily search for and add packages to your project to application.
To add a dependency to your application, right-click on the Dependencies / Packages folder, and select Add Packages:
Information on using a NuGet package in an application can be found in the Including a NuGet project in your project article.
Refactoring
Visual Studio for Mac provides two useful ways to refactor your code: Context Actions, and Source Analysis. You can read more about them in the Refactoring article.
Debugging
Visual Studio for Mac has a native debugger allowing debugging support for Xamarin.iOS, Xamarin.Mac, and Xamarin.Android applications. Visual Studio for Mac uses the Mono Soft Debugger, which is implemented into the Mono runtime, allowing the IDE to debug managed code across all platforms. For additional information on debugging, visit the Debugging article.
The debugger contains rich visualizers for special types such as strings, colors, URLs, as well as sizes, co-ordinates, and bézier curves.
For more information on the debugger's data visualizations, visit the Data Visualizations article.
Version control
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Visual Studio for Mac integrates with Git and Subversion source control systems. Projects under source control are denoted with the branch listed next to the Solution name:
Files with uncommitted changes have an annotation on their icons in the Solution Pane, as illustrated in the following image:
For more information on using version control in Visual Studio, see the Version Control article.