Visual Studio on a Mac

Question

My job is currently based on Visual Studio (ASP.NET).
Looking for experiences using Visual Studio on a Mac.
Does it work?

Answer 1

I run Visual Studio 2008 on a Mac via the Parallels desktop and it works perfectly.

Answer 2

Yes it does, using VMWare Fusion. It works quite well, actually; the Unity feature allows you to treat Visual Studio in its own Mac window. However, you will need a current version of OS X (10.5.x), a LOT of RAM (more than 4GB), and a lot of hard drive space, as you will need to install all of Windows in your VM.

Answer 3

I've run it in VMWare Fusion (and Parallels previously) on several Macs with 2 gig of RAM without any issues. I generally install with BootCamp because that lets you boot into "native" Windows if you need more "umph" (or if you want to game), and the more recent versions of VMWare and Parallels both allow booting the VM directly from the BootCamp partition.

Answer 4

Like Stephen Doyle I use Parallels Desktop.

I'm currently running Parallels Desktop 4.0 on an old MackBook Pro with 2GB and its a bit slow.

In my last job I had a MacBook Pro with 4GB. I used Parallels Desktop 3.0 and ran VS2008 in a VM with 1.5GB memory. It worked well.

Answer 5

I am working on an IMac now using VS2008 through BootCamp using Vista. I have tried it using Parallels and found it to be very slow at times. Using BootCamp it is a dream though (apart from having to reboot if you want to use OSx.) I would recommend the BootCamp route.

Answer 6

In a word, yes.

I use a Mac Mini 1.67 GHz machine with 2GB of RAM. That's not an impressive box, but performance under WinXP is excellent. I have used VS2005, VS2008, MySQL Server, Sql Server Express, and dozens of little utilities.

The only issues I've ever had were when I used a hotkey (ex: F10) that was assigned to something like Expose in the mac. So I would hit F10 and instead of stepping over, it would bring up the weather widget. Workaround was to reassign those keys on the Mac (i.e., reassign to Shift+F10).

Edit:

I see others report having sluggish performance. You may want to get an extra drive and keep your Virtual Drive there. I've been doing that for a long time, and that may be the reason for good performance under XP. Jeff Atwood has a blog entry about this topic.

Answer 7

I'm running VMWare Fusion on an iMac with 3GB memory. 1.5GB memory is allocated to the Windows XP that lives in the virtual world. The performance is very satisfying overall, but seems sluggish when I open or compile large C# projects. I am using visual studio 2008.

Answer 8

Personally, I am a big fan of VMWare Fusion. You can not only run the development environment of your choice, but setup test sandboxes to deploy and view your application through. I have a crusty XP install running IE6 just to make sure that my applications are passable by its poor standards.

Make sure you've got plenty of RAM for your Mac!

Answer 9

I use Base Camp and I run Vista w/ VS 2008 on a MacBook Pro. I think it's the bees knees. Mac may make crappy dirty hippie software but they make some rockin hardware.

Answer 10

Visualization is the only way I know. If you want to do .NET work in a native IDE I suggest MonoDevelop

Answer 11

It definitely works using VMware or Parallels. I've used it in both and it worked far better in VMware Fusion. Things to keep in mind:

• You want lots of RAM. My MacBook Pro has 6GB, with 2GB allocated to the VM
• Defrag often. A fragmented drive is especially slow under virtualization
• Compress unused space often. You're VM will quickly consume many GB as the compiler creates lots of new files
• Use Windows XP. It's way faster.

Good luck!

Answer 12

I run VS 2008 / SQL 2008 on a MistakeBook Pro. I thought Parallels and Fusion kinda sucked for development. Bootcamp is pretty good though, just no native drivers to read the Mac partition of the hard drive. Also the windows 7 drivers are still lacking, the trackpad does not work. Still better than OSX.

Answer 13

VS.2008 under XP/Vista/Win7. The tradeoff is whether you want faster compiles or more fan noise. If I need the power, the VM gets to virtualize both cores, then studio becomes much zippier. However, it tends to annoy the fans.

All things considered, it's very slick.

Answer 14

Lots of people are talking about Parallels and VMWare Fusion, but I didn't see any mention of the other methods I've used to good effect.

1. Visual Studio via Remote Desktop - I have a laptop running Windows/Visual Studio with a static IP and use the Microsoft Remote Desktop client to connect from my Mac. This has the advantage of minimal overhead on the Mac, so is more responsive than a VM. However, it has the obvious disadvantage of requiring a second machine running Windows and Visual Studio. If you're running Windows Server 2008, as a bonus you can run RemoteApp to share just Visual Studio to your mac - very convenient.

2. Virtual machine using VirtualBox - All the major features of a VM, except VirtualBox is free. I've used VMs with VMWare Fusion, Parallels and VirtualBox and I have to say I find performance to be pretty much even across all three. Parallels tended to drive my CPU harder than the other two but the actual VM responsiveness was fine. VirtualBox also has Seamless mode, essentially similar to Parallel's Coherence mode, but less integrated into the Desktop. I use this every day to run a Windows-only application on my Mac and it works great, sharing only the window for that application instead of running a full Windows desktop.

3. Boot Camp - depending on your needs, running Boot Camp with Windows installed as a dual-boot OS will of course offer the best performance but with the downside of running Windows ;)

Answer 15

I thank all for these great comments. I am designer/front-end developer working on pc environment using vs 2005 and decided to purchase a mac. Reading this answer a lot of questions I had and all the different options to have a mac and pc envirnments at the same time specially the virtual machine support. Now the only thing to decide if a laptop will be sufficient for a heavy graphic user who needs a big screen for apps with lots of menus and design for print, web and multimedia.

Answer 16

I'm using a 2.66 dual-core MacBook Pro 4gb RAM, VS2008 + XP in Parallels and I'm not having the best experience. Sadly, another hard drive is not an option and if I were to get an external hard drive, I'm not sure why I wouldn't just go back to a Windows laptop that doesn't need extra hardware. Others seem to have had a good experience with this set up though so I'm going to continue to tweak my settings. So far I'm kinda regretting having bought a Mac but not quite enough yet to take the financial hit of selling it on eBay.

Answer 17

To answer Hardvy. It's because he's trolling. He's simply insulting with no real reason why.

Answer 18

I do this a bit, but I find the keyboard on a MBP miserable for VS/R# - the home/end/page-up/page-down differences/omissions are particularly tedious.

Answer 19

Some default replacements for Home/End et al.:

• Start-of-File: Fn-Ctrl-Left
• End-of-File: Fn-Ctrl-Right
• Page-Up: Fn-Up
• Page-Down: Fn-Down
• Start-of-Line: Fn-Left
• End-of-Line: Fn-Right
• F1: Fn-F1
• ...
• F12: Fn-F12