Microsoft has today released the test version of Visual Studio for Mac and Visual Studio 2017 for Windows, reports ZDNet. The Mac version is actually a rebranded version of the Xamarin Studio integrated development environment (IDE) that has been optimized to work on the Mac.
Microsoft’s Nat Friedman and James Montemagno introduced Visual Studio for Mac at this morning’s Connect(); 2016 keynote. The software aims to be a developer environment optimized for building mobile and cloud apps using Xamarin and .NET, Microsoft says. It includes the tools developers need to create, debug, test and publish Android, iOS and server apps.
Visual Studio for Mac will incorporate IntelliSense and refactoring via the Roslyn Compiler platform and use MSBuild, and will use the same debugger engines from Xamarin and .NET Core apps, and the same designers for Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android.
Alongside the Mac app, Windows also seeded the near-final Release Candidate version of Visual Studio 2017. The final version of the software will be available to the public in early 2017, according to ZDNet.
