Are you a Mac user who wants to use Visual Studio and build .Net applications

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Well the answer is yes you can!

At the Connect() developer event in New York City.  We announced a number of new capabilities coming with the Visual Studio 2015 and .NET 5 releases and some exciting news regarding .NET Open Source and Visual Studio Community editions.  You can watch the event on-demand here.

But here is a quick summary

Open Sourcing the .NET Core Runtime and Libraries

Open sourcing the .NET Core Runtime.  This will include everything needed to execute .NET code – including the CLR, Just-In-Time Compiler (JIT), Garbage Collector (GC), and core .NET base class libraries. We are releasing the source under the MIT open source license and are also issuing an explicit patent promise to clarify users patent rights to .NET.  This is published on the public GitHub https://github.com/dotnet/corefx

The source release includes many of the newer core .NET framework libraries (ImmutableCollections, SIMD, XML and MetadataReader).  These libraries are fully open, and are ready to accept contributions.  Over the next several weeks and months we will continue to transfer source (including the Core CLR which is not there right now but in the process of being moved) into the repository and likewise make it open for contributions.

What does this open sourcing mean?

The open source announcement, simply means that developers will have a fully supported, fully open source, fully cross platform .NET stack for creating server and cloud applications – including everything from the C#/VB compilers, to the CLR runtime, to the core .NET base class libraries, to the higher-level .NET Web, Data and API frameworks. 

Announcing .NET Core Framework on Linux and OSX

Last month at a Cloud Event held in San Francisco, Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO – showed a slide like this one where he talked about how Microsoft loves Linux:

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We’ve worked hard with Azure to make it a first-class cloud platform for Linux based applications, and shared how more than 20% of all VMs running on Azure are Linux based.  In fact, we now have a number different Linux distributions officially supported for use on Azure – with full integration within our management portal and command-line extensibility.

Which now include Ubuntu, CoreOs, Centos, Suse, Oracle Linux and Puppet Labs

 

Bringing Core .NET to Linux and OS X

In addition to making the .NET server stack open-source, we are also going to release an official distribution of the .NET Core for Linux, as well as an official distribution of .NET Core for the Mac operation system as well.

This will enable you to build .NET server and cloud applications and run them on both Windows Server and Linux.  It is going to enable every developer – regardless of what operating system they use to develop or target – to use .NET. And to do so on a fully open source runtime.

We will be working closely with the Mono community as we complete our Linux port.  The Mono community have done a great job advancing .NET and Linux over the last decade.  Releasing the .NET Core source under an open source license is going to enable us to collaborate together much more closely going forward. 

Visual Studio Community Edition

A new free edition of Visual Studio -  Visual Studio Community 2013 edition is a full-featured IDE.  It supports multiple project types in one solution file in a single IDE, and has all of the productivity features and IDE extensibility capabilities (meaning you can use Xamarin, ReSharper, VsVim, and any other VSIX extension) that developers love in Visual Studio.

It is now available completely free for:

  • Any individual developer working on a commercial or non-commercial project
  • Any developer contributing to an open source project
  • Anyone in an academic research or course setting (e.g. students, teachers, classroom, online course)
  • Any non-enterprise organization with 5 or fewer developers working on a commercial/non-commercial project together

There is no program you need to join to use it – simply visit www.visualstudio.com, click the download button. 

Visual Studio Community Edition Virtual Machine

It is going to enable even more developers to take advantage of Visual Studio and build even better applications.  We are looking forward to seeing what you build with it. Additionally if your a Mac User you can now spin up a virtual machine running community connect as part of an Azure.

The Visual Studio Community 2013 image enables you to unleash the full power of Visual Studio to develop cross-platform solutions. Create apps in one unified IDE, and incorporate new languages, features, and development tools into them with Visual Studio Extensions (available in the Visual Studio Gallery).

Pricing Information

Pricing varies based on the subscription you select to provision your virtual machine see https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/?scenario=virtual-machines but as an example you could spin up a D3 Series Windows Virtual Machine with 4 Cores and 14GB Ram with a 250GB SSD drive for 1.42 Euro per hour and simply only pay per the hour by turning the machine off when not required.

Summary

It has never been a better time to be a software developer. 

With the provision of FREE Software and Visual Studio Community edition it will now enable organizations to succeed in today’s digital environment.

Using the cloud, every software developer on the planet can now create and build solutions that can reach millions of users, with no upfront costs, powered by a cloud infrastructure that delivers completely global reach.  The impact an individual developer can now have has never been greater than it is today.

.NET open source, cross platform, and Visual Studio Community edition announcements will enable the development technology we build to be leveraged by an even wider range of developers and across all mobile platforms

Developers can now use the breadth Microsoft’s tools and services for free with Visual Studio Community 2013 tools for developing applications from mobile and desktop to web and cloud, Azure Free Trial providing hosting for 10 websites + 10 mobile services, and Visual Studio Online offering developer services free for up to 5 users.  You can get started with all three offers today.

The Event and official announcements

You can watch the online presentations here.  Also read Soma’s blog post for a summary of some of the new VS 2015 and .NET 5 capabilities