As expected, Microsoft today made its Visual Studio developer environment available on macOS. The first preview of Visual Studio for Mac is live now, with Microsoft hoping that the cross-platform availability will push more developers to build for Windows.
Previously, developers interested in building for Windows were required to use a virtual machine, a dedicated Windows computer, or BootCamp. Now, however, developers can work directly in macOS
Visual Studio for Mac takes many design cues from its Windows counterpart and many core tools are there, such as IntelliSense and some of Xamarin’s cross-platform development tools. Microsoft acquired cross-platform development company Xamarin earlier this year, and it’s using much of the company’s technology to bring Visual Studio to the Mac.
Visual Studio for Mac supports both C# and F# languages, using the same under-the-hood tools as the Roslyn Compiler Platform and MSBuild.
The launch of Visual Studio for Mac comes a year and a half after Microsoft launched Visual Studio Code for Mac, a cross-platform code editor for developers.
The Mac edition of Visual Studio is available currently in a preview build, but as Microsoft said earlier this week, its ultimate goal is to make the Mac version of the app a direct counterpart to the Windows version. Interested developers can download Visual Studio for Mac for free here.
