| title | description | author | ms.author | ms.date | ms.topic | ms.assetid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Visual Studio for Mac Tour |
Visual Studio for Mac provides an integrated development environment to build .NET applications on macOS, including ASP.NET Core websites and Xamarin projects for iOS, Android, Mac, and Xamarin.Forms. |
asb3993 |
amburns |
04/14/2017 |
article |
7DC64A52-AA41-4F3A-A8A1-8A20BCD81CC7 |
Visual Studio for Mac evolves Xamarin's mobile-centric IDE, Xamarin Studio, into a mobile-first, cloud-first development environment on the Mac. This developer-focused tool allows you to leverage the power of .NET to create applications for all platforms required by your users.
The user experience (UX) of Visual Studio for Mac is similar to that of its Windows counterpart, but with a native macOS feel. 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.
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 cross-platform applications.
Visual Studio for Mac is organized into several sections for managing application files and settings, creating application code, and debugging.
When launched, Visual Studio for Mac displays a Welcome Screen as shown below:
The Welcome Screen contains the following sections:
- Toolbar - Provides quick access to the search bar. When a solution is loaded, this is used to set app configurations, for debugging, and for displaying errors.
- Getting Started - Provides quick access to useful topics for developers getting started with Visual Studio for Mac.
- Recent Solutions - Provides quick access to recently opened solutions, as well as convenient buttons to open or create projects.
- Developer News - A news feed that keeps you up to date on the latest Microsoft Developer information.
The image below shows Visual Studio for Mac with an application loaded:
The following sections provide an overview of the major areas in Visual Studio for Mac.
The Solution Pad organizes the project(s) in a solution, as shown below:
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, refer to the Projects and Solutions topic.
Assembly references for each project are available under the References folder shown below:
Additional references can be 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, refer to the Managing References in a Project topic.
All external dependencies used in your app are stored in the Dependencies or Packages folder, depending on if you are in a .Net Core or Xamarin.iOS/Xamarin.Android project. These are usually provided in the form of a NuGet or a Component.
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 topic.
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 topic.
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 topic.
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 topic.
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 changed have an annotation on their icons in the Solution Pane, as shown below:
For more information on using version control in Visual Studio, refer to the Version Control topic.