Visual Studio With C For Mac



I'm currently using visual studio to code c and I was wondering if there is a way to see what version of c (for example, c11, 14, 17, 20) I'm using? I've tried typing gcc -version in my local terminal but all it tells me is the clang version. With Visual Studio for Mac you can write in C#, F#, Razor, HTML5, CSS, Javascript and Typescript, XAML, and XML.

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If you haven't downloaded and installed Visual Studio and the Microsoft C/C++ tools yet, here's how to get started.

Visual Studio 2019 Installation

Welcome to Visual Studio 2019! In this version, it's easy to choose and install just the features you need. And because of its reduced minimum footprint, it installs quickly and with less system impact.

Note

This topic applies to installation of Visual Studio on Windows. Visual Studio Code is a lightweight, cross-platform development environment that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. The Microsoft C/C++ for Visual Studio Code extension supports IntelliSense, debugging, code formatting, auto-completion. Visual Studio for Mac doesn't support Microsoft C++, but does support .NET languages and cross-platform development. For installation instructions, see Install Visual Studio for Mac.

Want to know more about what else is new in this version? See the Visual Studio release notes.

Ready to install? We'll walk you through it, step-by-step.

Step 1 - Make sure your computer is ready for Visual Studio

Before you begin installing Visual Studio:

Compiler
  1. Check the system requirements. These requirements help you know whether your computer supports Visual Studio 2019.

  2. Apply the latest Windows updates. These updates ensure that your computer has both the latest security updates and the required system components for Visual Studio.

  3. Reboot. The reboot ensures that any pending installs or updates don't hinder the Visual Studio install.

  4. Free up space. Remove unneeded files and applications from your %SystemDrive% by, for example, running the Disk Cleanup app.

For questions about running previous versions of Visual Studio side by side with Visual Studio 2019, see the Visual Studio 2019 Platform Targeting and Compatibility page.

Step 2 - Download Visual Studio

Next, download the Visual Studio bootstrapper file. To do so, choose the following button to go to the Visual Studio download page. Select the edition of Visual Studio that you want and choose the Free trial or Free download button.

Step 3 - Install the Visual Studio installer

Run the bootstrapper file you downloaded to install the Visual Studio Installer. This new lightweight installer includes everything you need to both install and customize Visual Studio.

  1. From your Downloads folder, double-click the bootstrapper that matches or is similar to one of the following files:

    • vs_community.exe for Visual Studio Community
    • vs_professional.exe for Visual Studio Professional
    • vs_enterprise.exe for Visual Studio Enterprise

    If you receive a User Account Control notice, choose Yes to allow the bootstrapper to run.

  2. We'll ask you to acknowledge the Microsoft License Terms and the Microsoft Privacy Statement. Choose Continue.

Step 4 - Choose workloads

After the installer is installed, you can use it to customize your installation by selecting the workloads, or feature sets, that you want. Here's how.

  1. Find the workload you want in the Installing Visual Studio screen.

    For core C and C++ support, choose the 'Desktop development with C++' workload. It comes with the default core editor, which includes basic code editing support for over 20 languages, the ability to open and edit code from any folder without requiring a project, and integrated source code control.

    Additional workloads support other kinds of development. For example, choose the 'Universal Windows Platform development' workload to create apps that use the Windows Runtime for the Microsoft Store. Choose 'Game development with C++' to create games that use DirectX, Unreal, and Cocos2d. Choose 'Linux development with C++' to target Linux platforms, including IoT development.

    The Installation details pane lists the included and optional components installed by each workload. You can select or deselect optional components in this list. For example, to support development by using the Visual Studio 2017 or 2015 compiler toolsets, choose the MSVC v141 or MSVC v140 optional components. You can add support for MFC, the experimental Modules language extension, IncrediBuild, and more.

  2. After you choose the workload(s) and optional components you want, choose Install.

    Next, status screens appear that show the progress of your Visual Studio installation.

Tip

At any time after installation, you can install workloads or components that you didn't install initially. If you have Visual Studio open, go to Tools > Get Tools and Features... which opens the Visual Studio Installer. Or, open Visual Studio Installer from the Start menu. From there, you can choose the workloads or components that you wish to install. Then, choose Modify.

Step 5 - Choose individual components (Optional)

If you don't want to use the Workloads feature to customize your Visual Studio installation, or you want to add more components than a workload installs, you can do so by installing or adding individual components from the Individual components tab. Choose what you want, and then follow the prompts.

Step 6 - Install language packs (Optional)

By default, the installer program tries to match the language of the operating system when it runs for the first time. To install Visual Studio in a language of your choosing, choose the Language packs tab from the Visual Studio Installer, and then follow the prompts.

Change the installer language from the command line

Another way that you can change the default language is by running the installer from the command line. For example, you can force the installer to run in English by using the following command: vs_installer.exe --locale en-US. The installer will remember this setting when it's run the next time. The installer supports the following language tokens: zh-cn, zh-tw, cs-cz, en-us, es-es, fr-fr, de-de, it-it, ja-jp, ko-kr, pl-pl, pt-br, ru-ru, and tr-tr.

Step 7 - Change the installation location (Optional)

You can reduce the installation footprint of Visual Studio on your system drive. You can choose to move the download cache, shared components, SDKs, and tools to different drives, and keep Visual Studio on the drive that runs it the fastest.

Important

You can select a different drive only when you first install Visual Studio. If you've already installed it and want to change drives, you must uninstall Visual Studio and then reinstall it.

Step 8 - Start developing

  1. After Visual Studio installation is complete, choose the Launch button to get started developing with Visual Studio.

  2. On the start window, choose Create a new project.

  3. In the search box, enter the type of app you want to create to see a list of available templates. The list of templates depends on the workload(s) that you chose during installation. To see different templates, choose different workloads.

    You can also filter your search for a specific programming language by using the Language drop-down list. You can filter by using the Platform list and the Project type list, too.

  4. Visual Studio opens your new project, and you're ready to code!

Visual Studio 2017 Installation

In Visual Studio 2017, it's easy to choose and install just the features you need. And because of its reduced minimum footprint, it installs quickly and with less system impact.

Prerequisites

  • A broadband internet connection. The Visual Studio installer can download several gigabytes of data.

  • A computer that runs Microsoft Windows 7 or later versions. We recommend Windows 10 for the best development experience. Make sure that the latest updates are applied to your system before you install Visual Studio.

  • Enough free disk space. Visual Studio requires at least 7 GB of disk space, and can take 50 GB or more if many common options are installed. We recommend you install it on your C: drive.

For details on the disk space and operating system requirements, see Visual Studio Product Family System Requirements. The installer reports how much disk space is required for the options you select.

Download and install

  1. To download the latest Visual Studio 2017 installer for Windows, go to the Microsoft Visual Studio Older downloads page. Expand the 2017 section, and choose the Download button.

    Tip

    The Community edition is for individual developers, classroom learning, academic research, and open source development. For other uses, install Visual Studio 2017 Professional or Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise.

  2. Find the installer file you downloaded and run it. The downloaded file may be displayed in your browser, or you may find it in your Downloads folder. The installer needs Administrator privileges to run. You may see a User Account Control dialog asking you to give permission to let the installer make changes to your system; choose Yes. If you're having trouble, find the downloaded file in File Explorer, right-click on the installer icon, and choose Run as Administrator from the context menu.

  3. The installer presents you with a list of workloads, which are groups of related options for specific development areas. Support for C++ is now part of optional workloads that aren't installed by default.

    For C and C++, select the Desktop development with C++ workload and then choose Install.

  4. When the installation completes, choose the Launch button to start Visual Studio.

    The first time you run Visual Studio, you're asked to sign in with a Microsoft Account. If you don't have one, you can create one for free. You must also choose a theme. Don't worry, you can change it later if you want to.

    It may take Visual Studio several minutes to get ready for use the first time you run it. Here's what it looks like in a quick time-lapse:

    Visual Studio starts much faster when you run it again.

  5. When Visual Studio opens, check to see if the flag icon in the title bar is highlighted:

    If it's highlighted, select it to open the Notifications window. If there are any updates available for Visual Studio, we recommend you install them now. Once the installation is complete, restart Visual Studio.

Visual Studio 2015 Installation

To install Visual Studio 2015, go to the Microsoft Visual Studio Older downloads page. Expand the 2015 section, and choose the Download button. Run the downloaded setup program and choose Custom installation and then choose the C++ component. To add C and C++ support to an existing Visual Studio 2015 installation, click on the Windows Start button and type Add Remove Programs. Open the program from the results list and then find your Visual Studio 2015 installation in the list of installed programs. Double-click it, then choose Modify and select the Visual C++ components to install.

In general, we highly recommend that you use the latest version of Visual Studio even if you need to compile your code using the Visual Studio 2015 compiler. For more information, see Use native multi-targeting in Visual Studio to build old projects.

When Visual Studio is running, you're ready to continue to the next step.

Next Steps

Hands On Microsoft this week opened the gates on Visual Studio for Mac 2019 8.3, a flexible development environment for .NET, and The Reg can give you the lowdown on some of the new features.

But first, let's see how the Microsofties got here. Redmond has three coding tools under the Visual Studio brand, all of which have different ancestries.

Visual Studio on Windows supports development not only in .NET languages but also C++, Python, JavaScript and Node.js, and cross-platform mobile development using Xamarin, Apache Cordova or C++. Depending on which edition you have, you also get SQL Server database tools, test and coverage frameworks, Microsoft Office and SharePoint development, R for data science work, built-in Docker tools and more.

Visual Studio Download Mac

Xamarin is a cross-platform .NET framework designed mainly for iOS and Android, but also with support for macOS applications. A confusing thing is that Xamarin does not use .NET Core, though it does support the .NET Standard 2.1 specification in its latest version. See here for guidance.

Xamarin evolved from the open-source Mono framework, an implementation of .NET for Windows and Linux. Mono had its own IDE, called MonoDevelop, which unlike Visual Studio was originally written entirely in C#. Xamarin adapted MonoDevelop to become Xamarin Studio. When Microsoft acquired Xamarin in 2016, Xamarin Studio became a Mac-only IDE and was renamed Visual Studio for Mac. You can still get MonoDevelop for Mac, Windows and Linux, though the Mac download is now Visual Studio for Mac, and on Windows you have to build it from source.

Mac

Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is a cross-platform editor built with the Electron framework, using Node.js and the Chromium browser engine Blink. VS Code was first previewed in 2015 and has been a remarkable success, now ranking as the top development environment on the popular coding Q&A site StackOverflow by a huge margin. Although lightweight in comparison to Visual Studio, VS Code straddles the boundary between an editor and an IDE, with debugging support and a rich range of extensions.

Following the acquisition, Microsoft has been working on sharing some of its Visual Studio for Windows technology with the Mac version. This goes alongside the development of the cross-platform .NET Core, which has allowed code sharing between Mono and .NET Core, though Mono has not been completely replaced. It is still the case that Visual Studio for the Mac is a very different thing from Visual Studio for Windows.

What can Visual Studio for Mac do?

VS Mac is primarily for Xamarin development. The majority of Xamarin developers code applications for iOS and Android, and there are two different approaches to this.

Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android let you write non-visual code in C# while using native tools to build the UI, Xcode for iOS or a built-in Android designer for Android.

Xamarin Forms is a cross-platform GUI framework. You design the user interface with XAML and build for your chosen target platforms.

You can also go beyond iOS and Android. Xamarin.Mac is for Cocoa applications and uses a similar model to Xamarin.iOS. Xamarin Forms can also target Windows UWP (Universal Windows Platform) and, in preview, macOS.

There is also steadily improving support for games development with Unity.

A glance at the Xamarin forums gives a crude guide to usage. Xamarin Forms has more than double the activity of any other section (over 51,000 threads). Xamarin.Android 34,000, Xamarin.iOS 21,000, and relatively low activity elsewhere – 343 threads for Xamarin.Mac, for example.

Xamarin Forms Mac support seems to be moribund; it was announced in 2017 but the platform status here was last updated in May 2018 and remains incomplete.

Visual Studio for the Mac also supports ASP.NET Core development using Razor, Angular or React.js, and serverless with Azure Functions.

Under the Vulture's Claw

A cross-platform Xamarin Forms app running on iOS and Android

We installed VS Mac on a 2018 Mac Mini. The installer pulls down the Android SDK for you, but you have to install Xcode separately. All straightforward, but there is a puzzle about .NET Core. Version 3.0 is installed automatically, and you can create ASP.NET Core apps, but when you go to create a mobile app, the option to create an ASP.NET Core API back end is disabled because it 'requires an ASP.NET Core installation'.

The look and feel of the IDE is different from Visual Studio on Windows, as you would expect from the product history. It feels more basic and less refined, and has only a fraction of the features of its similarly named cousin.

There is no visual designer for Xamarin Forms, but there is a visual preview. Unfortunately, this did not work for iOS on our very simple demo app, showing instead a MonoTouch exception message. But the app itself worked fine on both Android and iOS. The IDE did crash once or twice but with no loss of work.

Another experiment was to create a Xamarin.Mac application and edit the generated storyboard, which defines the user interface using Xcode. This worked perfectly.

What's new?

VS Mac 8.3 supports .NET Core 3 and C# 8.0, and Xamarin now supports Android 10, Xcode 11 and iOS 13.

One of the big new features, though in preview, is XAML hot reload in Xamarin Forms. This lets you amend the XAML file defining your UI, save it, and see the changes instantly in the app running on an emulator or device.

The Visual Studio Mac native editor shares code with Visual Studio on Windows

The C# editor in VS Mac was rewritten by the Visual Studio team after the Microsoft acquisition. It now has what Microsoft calls a 'fully native UI', raising the interesting question of how much of the old MonoDevelop code, which used cross-platform Gtk#, remains in VS Mac. The new native editor was fully released in July, but VS Mac 8.3 now supports web editing (JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, CSS and more). This lets Microsoft share more features between Visual Studio on Windows and VS Mac, including improved IntelliSense. You also get proper bidirectional text support and a natty feature called multi-caret editing that lets you overtype multiple regions of selected text simultaneously.

Visual Studio For Mac Tutorial

There is a new dialog for the NuGet package manager, but care is needed because not all NuGet packages will work on the Mac.

Microsoft Visual Studio Mac

These are highlights; the full list of what's new is here.

Observations

Microsoft has two successful Visual Studio development tools, and then there is VS Mac, which is important only for Mac-based Xamarin developers. Xamarin.Mac and Xamarin Forms targeting macOS are both interesting for .NET developers wondering how to get their Windows apps onto a Mac, but both are neglected relative to iOS and Android. If you want to develop for ASP.NET Core you would be better off with Visual Studio on Windows, and probably better off with VS Code with its much larger community and rich extension support. Strategically, it might make sense for Microsoft to invest in making VS Code more useful for Xamarin developers. All that said, VS Mac is substantially improved and the price is right: even the free Community edition is a capable tool. ®

Visual Studio With C For Mac Osx

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