.NET Core tools for Mac
Are you a .NET developer? Would like to switch from Windows to Mac? Or maybe you are already on Mac? We all love Macs! So this is a review of the tools you might use on Mac for developing .NET applications.
First of all, let’s say thank you to Microsoft and Mono project that after years we got .NET Core and it is really cross-platform. For those who do not know .NET framework was declared as a cross-platform initially, but in fact, it was not until .NET Core was released. So let’s dive into the tools.
Microsoft VS Code
Visual Studio Code is a text editor with the ability to install plugins and is a powerful tool in all means. Despite the fact that it is just a text editor, you can do almost anything with this tool. There are hundreds of plugins for different languages and C# is not an exception. Just go to Microsoft website and download the latest version. All you need is just jump to the extension and find C# for Visual Studio Code (powered by OmniSharp). Certainly .NET Core has to be installed beforehand.
You can do the same directly from the marketplace.
VS Code is a text editor and it is worth mentioning that it has the power of hotkeys for text editing. Check hotkeys for Mac.
There is no button in VS Code that could create a new solution or project. You have to use the terminal to run dotnet commands to create a new project. You can open/close a terminal directly in VS Code by pressing Ctrl+` keys or navigating to View->Terminal. Let’s create a folder for our test application and create a console application:
dotnet new console --framework net5.0Now you can open the folder with the console application by navigating the menu File->Open Folder. You should see something like this:
To run and debug your application you just need to navigate to the “Run and Debug” tab on the left sidebar, press create a lunch.json file and you have to see the suggested template in the command palette. Choose the first one related to the .NET Core.
Now you will be able to debug the project in a normal way. You can use buttons on the top to the VS Code or standard Visual Studio’s hotkeys.
Visual Studio for Mac
Well, I personally have a bad experience using this tool. The UI is horrible. It looks like a Windows application was adopted for Mac. Have you ever used Microsoft Office on Mac? The same problem. Sorry, Microsoft! Every time I run a project it looks like my laptop does not have enough RAM to do this. I work on 16 inch MacBook Pro 2019 with Intel i9 and 16Gb of RAM and with this setup Visual Studio for Mac works really slow even with the “Hello World!” console application. Anyways this tool might be familiar for most .NET developers who used Visual Studio on Windows. So, give it a try.
JetBrains Rider
This is the main IDE for me on Mac. It is not free and the license is around 14$ per month. However, I can say that it works just perfectly on Mac. If you ever tried the ReSharper tool for the Microsoft Visual Studio you know that it gives extra power to the IDE. JetBrains Rider includes this tool by default. I think the UI might be a bit different, but not dramatically in comparison to Microsoft Visual Studio. So you will understand what is very fast. The only thing that might be ridiculous for Microsoft Visual Studio on Windows is the debugging tools. For all JetBrains products, there is one ideology in this way, when you run a project in debug mode on the top of the IDE you will get a debugging window on the bottom of the IDE. This might be confusing as it was for me personally. However, in other means debugging is the same as with Microsoft Visual Studio on Windows.
Some other things might be slightly in the different places, such as NuGet packages management, management of the secrets, etc. But you can easily google it.
You can also bind hotkeys to be Visual Studio Windows or Mac, ReSharper Windows or Mac, and many more. Just go to Preferences->Keymap.
Another cool thing about JetBrains Rider is that you can connect to any database directly from this IDE. Just navigate to View->Tool Windows->Database in the top menu. Select a required database and specify a connections string.
Azure Data Studio
If you are using Microsoft SQL Server in your project you might probably use the Azure Data Studio tool. The UI is minimalistic and looks the same as Microsoft VS Code. It has the same idea that you can install plugins and extend this tool. However, just for now, the number of plugins is not big and all are mostly specific for Microsoft technologies. Even a Postgres plugin is just a preview version. Anyways, I had done a lot with this tool in terms of working with Microsoft SQL Server.
To connect to the server just navigate to the first tab on the left sidebar and click the “Add connection” button.
Other great tools
I would like to mention some tools which I also use when developing .NET projects. Some of them are quite popular and can be used for different purposes, not just specifically for the .NET platform.
