.NET winforms to Apple Macintosh

Question

Hi,

I have a winforms of .NET running in windows OS, my client wants the same to be run on macintosh OS, how do i start on this?

Is there a conversion framework (mono/etc) available to implement this?

Please reply.

Thanks in advance, Karthick

Answer 1

See this

Basically it says "The ROTOR project (a Microsoft sponsored open source version of the .NET runtime), last I saw, had something in the works for the Mac, but realize that ROTOR is mostly about the .NET bits and pieces that were submitted as a standard (as far as I remember, WinForms is not in that category). Also, if you check out the Mono project http://www.go-mono.com/ there is someone working on a Mac port, but they are far from being done."

Answer 2

Mono (which is an open source implementation of the .NET 2.0 CLR) is probably what you're looking for.

The last time I tried Mono on a Mac (in July), I wasn't terribly impressed. Well, I was impressed that it worked at all, but it was clear that it was still in an experimental stage.

If your application is pure .NET 2.0, then there's a good chance that they will "work". However, there will probably be a lot of work on your end to make it as useable Mac OS X -- some of the UI stuff doesn't translate well (button sizes, fonts, etc.), and there are other little glitches that you'll encounter. Ultimately it will look very un mac-like.

Also, if your app needs COM (to use an embedded IE or DirectX or something), then it's not going to work.

Answer 3

The first thing that comes to mind is to use VMWare Fusion or Parallels to run your unmodified app on a virtual machine:

http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/features.html or http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/

I've used VMWare to run a .net app with on a Vista virtual machine on a Macbook Pro.

Your next -- and perhaps more difficult option -- is to use Mono -- http://www.mono-project.com/Main%5FPage

Answer 4

Take a look at the Mono project's MoMA, The Mono Migration Analyzer. It will help you identify incompatibilities in your .NET code when attempting to migrate to the Mono framework.