Visual Studio on a Mac [closed]

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'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 2

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 3

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 4

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 5

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 6

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.