It's only logical: Visual Studio is the richest development experience for building C# and VB.NET applications, and it only runs on Windowsright? When I joined Stormpath to work on our open-source.NET authentication library, I was handed a MacBook Pro and given an interesting challenge: can a Mac be an awesome.NET development platform? ML.NET is a cross-platform, machine learning framework for.NET developers. Model Builder is the UI tooling in Visual Studio that uses Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) to train and consume custom ML.NET models in your.NET apps. You can use ML.NET and Model Builder to create custom machine learning models without having prior machine learning experience and without leaving the.NET ecosystem. Jan 30, 2018 VS Mac 7.2.2 - Storyboard won't open - icon just spins 1 Solution Xamarin.iOS Sharing violation on path regression 0 Solution Could not create a new solution on Visual Studio for Mac 0 Solution Version control commit fails if Git would report fatal: LF would be replaced by CRLF. May 19, 2020 ML.NET is a cross-platform, machine learning framework for.NET developers. Model Builder is the UI tooling in Visual Studio that uses Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) to train and consume custom ML.NET models in your.NET apps. You can use ML.NET and Model Builder to create custom machine learning models without having prior machine learning experience and without leaving the.NET ecosystem.
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 Visual Studio For Mac
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.
Microsoft made three promises for .NET 5: Western digital utilities mac.
- 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. Print pant mac.
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 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 a code editor and debugger, Visual Studio for Mac includes compilers, code completion tools, graphical designers, and source control features 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 uses the same foundation as Visual Studio on Windows. 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.
Getting started
When you start Visual Studio 2019 for Mac for the first time, 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 I'll do this later and sign in later via the Visual Studio > Sign in menu item:
You'll then be given the option to customize the IDE by selecting your preferred keyboard shortcuts: Visual Studio for Mac, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, or Xcode:
After this initial setup experience, you'll see the start window whenever you open Visual Studio 2019 for Mac, 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.
Visual Studio For Mac Tutorial
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.
Source Editor
Regardless of if you're writing in C#, XAML, or JavaScript, the code editor the shares the same core components with Visual Studio on Windows, with an entirely native user interface.
This brings some of the following features:
- Native macOS (Cocoa-based) user interface (tooltips, editor surface, margin adornments, text rendering, IntelliSense)
- IntelliSense type filtering and 'show import items'
- Support for native text inputs
- RTL/BiDi language support
- Roslyn 3
- Multi-caret support
- Word wrap
- Updated IntelliSense UI
- Improved find/replace
- Snippet support
- Format selection
- Inline lightbulbs
For more information on using the Source Editor in Visual Studio for Mac, see the Source Editor documentation.
To keep tabs visible at all times, you can take advantage of pinning them. This ensures that every time you launch a project, the tab you need will always appear. To pin a tab, hover over the tab and click the pin icon:
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 debuggers that support .NET Core, .NET Framework, Unity, and Xamarin projects. Visual Studio for Mac uses the .NET Core debugger and the Mono Soft Debugger, 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, coordinates, and bézier curves.
For more information on the debugger's data visualizations, visit the Data Visualizations article.
Version control
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.
Next steps
Related Video
See also
