macOS Programming for windows on Mac OS !!

You can look into the Mono project, which provides a CLR and a C# (and probably other .net langauges?) compiler for non-Windows platforms. I don't know if any IDEs on OS X are integrated with Mono... but probably nothing like VS if there are.

You can use VMWare with Unity mode to run VS, but if you're using Mono you're probably going to be in a grossly different development environment. You may be fine with this.

-Lee

I briefly used this. Not sure how good it is since I didn't do much with it.

http://monodevelop.com/

majidgrok said:

thanks for your response, can you explain what is exactly "Unity mode"...

is it lighter in front of running windows (by vmware) and then Visual Studio ?

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In vmware fusion unity mode allows you to hide the windows desktop and have applications running on windows display like other OS X apps. You're still virtualizing windows but get closer to a seamless experience.

-Lee

While I don't know much about C# development, you might want to consider the C++ QT framework. It can write applications for Windows, OS X, and Linux. I would reccomend checking it out.

lee1210 said:

You can look into the Mono project, which provides a CLR and a C# (and probably other .net langauges?) compiler for non-Windows platforms. I don't know if any IDEs on OS X are integrated with Mono... but probably nothing like VS if there are.

You can use VMWare with Unity mode to run VS, but if you're using Mono you're probably going to be in a grossly different development environment. You may be fine with this.

-Lee

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Virtual Box does something similar.

I wouldn't use Mono right at the moment, its future is still relatively unknown.

http://www.sysmannews.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=35560&print=true

I took a whole slew of .NET programming classes with the free Dreamspark.com VS 2008 installed in a VirtualBox machine. If you are a student (ie, have access to a .edu address) , you can download Visual Studio and Server 2008 for free. With this running in VirtualBox and you basically have a free development station for Windows.

It worked perfect and it was better than getting a Windows box because I was simply able to shutdown the program to get back to my Mac.

While I would probably not do much serios development in it if I was targeting windows in a real way, there is also Cocotron

If your target platform is Windows, then you should use Windows.

If you don't want to bootcamp, you could run a VM'd instance. I would not really recommend mono unless if you really do want cross platform support.

SidBala said:

If your target platform is Windows, then you should use Windows.

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^^This

I am a C# developer and can tell you that you should stick to windows if you are programming for that environment. I would setup Bootcamp and then use VMware to start it up in OSx. From there you can use the unity mode to make it look more native and it does work well.

It used to be possible to cross-compile a Windows app using Metrowerks Codewarrior on a Mac. But that product is long obsolete, unless you have an old PPC Mac running Mac Classic.

There might be some Windows development tools that run under the Mac version of Crossover. But you'd still have to test and debug on a Windows VM.

Though Wine will let you perform some development tasks on your Mac (such as creating an installer with InnoSetup - runs perfectly in all versions of Wine I've tried it with), the actual coding will require a real Windows environment.

lee1210 said:

You can use VMWare with Unity mode to run VS, but if you're using Mono you're probably going to be in a grossly different development environment. You may be fine with this.

-Lee

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Why is this any better/different from using Parallels and its Coherence mode? Or is it?

SteelWheel said:

Why is this any better/different from using Parallels and its Coherence mode? Or is it?

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I'm guessing they do the same thing, I wasn't aware of this parallels feature.

-Lee

lee1210 said:

I'm guessing they do the same thing, I wasn't aware of this parallels feature.

-Lee

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Or Virtual box and seamless mode. They all support it now.

wpotere said:

I would setup Bootcamp and then use VMware to start it up in OSx.

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Why go through all the trouble and pay for the privilege ? Just download virtual box (free) and install Windows on a virtual hard disk.

Much easier to get rid of it if it becomes useless, just delete the virtual hard disk file and you've got your space back.

ulbador said:

If you are a student (ie, have access to a .edu address) , you can download Visual Studio and Server 2008 for free.

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If you're not, the Express versions work just fine :

http://www.microsoft.com/express/Downloads/#2010-Visual-CS