Any really goods reasons and/or things to be aware of why one should use Xamarin Studio over Visual Studio for Xamarin projects (or vice-versa)?
It's been a while since the support for XS on Windows was dropped and the same will eventually happen to XS for Mac. Visual Studio will become the only IDE for both Mac and Windows to develop Xamarin Apps.
For me this is the best reason to start using Visual Studio.
Related
Using the CMake GUI, for the same CMakeList, I am able to generate VS solution files on Windows and XCode solution files on Mac. However I am unable to generate VS solution on Mac, as I don't use any VS options under Specify the generator for this project.
I have VS 2017 Community for Mac installed on the Macbook. Is there anything I am missing?
Visual Studio for Mac is very different from Visual Studio.
The former is based on Xamarin Studio, a product of Xamarin Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft in early 2016. Microsoft then basically rebranded Xamarin Studio as Visual Studio for Mac. Note that Xamarin Studio was mainly an IDE for developing mobile apps. Visual Studio for Mac currently has no support for C++.
Because of this, CMake currently does not support Visual Studio for Mac. The Visual Studio generators that ship with CMake only work with the Windows versions of Visual Studio.
And before someone asks: They also don't work with Visual Studio Code, which is yet another product that has little in common with Visual Studio except the name. Unlike Visual Studio for Mac however, Visual Studio Code has extensive support for C++ development with CMake through plugins and might be a viable alternative if you're looking for a Visual Studio-like development experience for C++ on Mac.
In that case, you open the workspace directly with VS Code and let its CMake plugins handle the configuration of CMake. You will not use the Visual Studio generators of CMake for VS Code, as VS Code is unable to work with the generated solution files.
I have installed Xamarin studio for mac today.
I have seen an ad for Visual Studio for Mac preview.
I do not understand what are the difference between those 2 products...
Thanks
Like #SushiHangover told, Xamarin Studio will be replaced by Visual Studio.
If you access the xamarin's page today (https://developer.xamarin.com/releases/studio/xamarin.studio_6.3/xamarin.studio_6.3/), you will se the alert:
Update for May 10, 2017: Xamarin Studio 6.3 is the final release of
Xamarin Studio. We recommend that developers now use Visual Studio on
both Windows and Mac. Visual Studio for Mac has all the features of
Xamarin Studio, adds cloud and web development, and contains
improvements for cross-platform mobile development.
and this one...
Visual Studio for Mac is replacing Xamarin Studio
Xamarin is a company that was founded in 2011 by engineers that created mono framework.
On early 2016 Xamarin and Microsoft announced that Microsoft signed a definitive agreement to acquire Xamarin. The acquisition value was something between $400 and $500 millions.
More information at wikipedia. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xamarin)
can anybody explain which tools I need. I have downloaded Xamarin studio but is this now merged into Visual studio for Mac ? I don't understand the difference.
Can you actually use both IDEs or what's going on. ? It seems that the trial licence I have in Xamarin is actually for VS...!
Visual Studio for Mac and Xamarin Studio sharing the same base. You can say if you will that Xamarin Studio is the father of Visual Studio for Mac. They are equal when it comes to mobile development. But Visual Studio for Mac brings support for asp.net core and has a higher Azure integration as well.
Xamarin Studio is a stable release, whereas Visual Studio for Mac is in preview. The release notes highlight new features, such as .NET Core support, connected app templates, and multi-process debugging. Visual Studio for Mac can be installed side-by-side with Xamarin Studio and requires Mono 4.8, which is available in the alpha and beta channels. Currently, installing the stable version of Xamarin Studio will downgrade Mono to an older version; this can be worked around by switching Xamarin Studio to alpha or beta, or opting out of the Mono downgrade.
How to create PCL wp7/win8 in visual studio 2013?
I have already installed windows phone 7 sdk and windows phone 8 sdk, but it does not help.
There is no option for wp 7.1.
Visual Studio does not support Windows Phone 7 development.
This may change in the future but, based on what has happened with previous versions of Visual Studio and separate SDKs, I suspect that is unlikely.
It's only possible to target PCL projects for SDKs that are installed.
You could build your PCL in VS2012 and consume it in a VS2103 project though.
On the other (/plus?) side, there are free versions of VS2012 and VS2013 and the can be installed side by side so you'll be able to build for WP7 for plenty of time to come.
Visual Studio 2013 has removed support for Windows Phone 7.x, Silverlight 4 and Xbox development.
For the entire list of compatibility between Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2013, see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/hh266747(v=vs.120).aspx.
Keep in mind that VS 2013 is still a preview. So maybe it will be available later but for the moment it looks like you can only create a PCL project with support for both Windows Phone 7 and Windows Store apps by using Visual Studio 2012
There is a solution according to
http://www.johanlaanstra.nl/2013/09/22/portable-class-libraries-with-wp7-support-in-visual-studio-2013-rc
...was wondering why Visual Studio would upgrade the project while the
profile was there on disk. While digging through the xml files for
Profile104 (C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference
Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework.NETPortable\v4.0\Profile\Profile104),
which is the profile I was using, I found some xml files in the
SupportedFrameworks subfolder. These xml files defined a
MinimumVisualStudioVersion and a MaximumVisualStudioVersion. For
Profile104, one of the files contained MaximumVisualStudioVersion="11"
which means Visual Studio 2012. Changing all xml files for the profile
to have MaximumVisualStudioVersion="12", which means Visual Studio
2013, made my scenario work after a restart of Visual Studio. I can
now open the PCL in Visual Studio 2013 without it being upgraded. Make
sure you restart VS after this change to make it work.
I have a feeling that the Visual Studio SDK is targeted heavily towards the version of Visual Studio it is created for, so I'm wondering how to do this in the best way possible. I currently only have Visual Studio 2008, but people using Visual Studio 2010 have begun wanting to use my tool as well, and I want to help them out. There were some using Visual Studio 2005 as well. Is there any way to do this without maintaining two (or three) different versions of the tool in different versions of Visual Studio?
This question is related, maybe it helps: Does Visual Studio 2010 have backward compatibility with visual studio 2008's addins?