Latish Sehgal

Dot Net Stuff from the DotNetSurfer

Working with Visual Studio on a Mac

When I recently purchased a Macbook Pro, I had a couple of options to set up my .Net development environment on there. I could use a Virtual Machine based solution such as Parallels or VMware Fusion, or run Windows natively using BootCamp. My first preference was to stay inside the Mac OS if possible. I spent some time researching which product other developers are having more success with and Fusion seemed to be  more stable and responsive for the majority of them. I downloaded the trial version from their website and took it for a spin, and have been really happy with it.

I have used both XP and Windows 7 in a VM with Fusion, and the performance has been pretty flawless. I allocate both processors, 40 GB of hard disk space and 2 GB of RAM to a VM. Some of my peers have long been advocating the advantages of developing using VMs, and now I totally get how cool this way of working is. I can create and restore snapshots at any point of time, create a new VM to try out any beta software, and keep my development environment isolated from softwares/utilities that it does not need (avoiding software bloat). I am using a Windows 7 VM right now for the most part and playing around with Visual Studio 2010 on it. I intially found the Unity feature in Fusion (it gives the illusion of running Windows apps natively on the Mac OS)  to be really cool, but I don't really use it much. I have dedicated a Space to my VMs, and tend to work in full screen mode.

If you end up going the same way as me, I would recommend looking at multiple vendors before purchasing Fusion. I bought if off Amazon, and it cost me $23.49 (including a $10 mail-in rebate). Other sites,including VMware, offer it for upto $80.

Posted: Aug 15 2009, 04:56 PM by latish | with 11 comment(s)
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Working with Visual Studio on a Mac - Latish Sehgal said:

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# August 15, 2009 7:05 PM

Working with Visual Studio on a Mac | I love .NET! said:

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# August 15, 2009 7:30 PM

cas said:

I really want one of the mac laptops. I wasn't aware I could still code using a VM. Sweet. Perhaps I will have to start considering moving over (to the other dark side).

# August 15, 2009 8:49 PM

latish said:

@cas, I have been trying to learn about alternate platforms just to broaden my thought process, I am liking it so far.

# August 15, 2009 10:00 PM

Jeff said:

I've been using Parallels pretty much from the time it came out, and without issue. And that was even on my older MBP (first gen) that maxed out at 2 gigs of RAM. Needless to say, it works fine on the newer 17"

In any case, been doing this now for three years, and avoid using any other Windows apps outside of VS and SQL studio, if possible.

# August 15, 2009 11:35 PM

Working with Visual Studio on a Mac | rapid-DEV.net said:

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# August 16, 2009 5:31 AM

Latish said:

@Jeff,

That's interesting! Have you tried using VMware yet? I intend to try out Parallels sometime next month.

# August 17, 2009 11:06 AM

Greg said:

VMware has been a must for me- I also found that Parallels is a great product, but  is a little bloated for my taste. VMware always seemed to run cleaner.

# December 27, 2009 4:59 PM

Alan G said:

Hello,

I am buying a laptop soon, and would like to buy apple but I also need to run Visual Studio, do you have any suggestions?

1) Is it better to use a virtual machine software(Fusion?) or to create a different partition for Windows (Bootcamp?) - to run Windows/VS?

2)Will the MacBook Air be enough with its 2.13GHz

Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 1066MHz frontside bus & 2GB Memory, or do I need something more like the MacBook Pro with 4Gb RAM? (Intel Core 2 Duo options are 2.53,2.66,2.8)

Thanks a lot for your help,

# January 6, 2010 10:21 AM

sehgal_latish said:

@Alan,

It depends on how much time you will be spending on VS in the Mac.

I would not recommend buying the MacBook Air unless your goal is a secondary portable laptop where you can run VS once in a while.

I use the MacBook Pro as my primary computer, and started out with 4GB RAM, 7200 RPM hard disk and 2.53 Core2Duo proc. Over the last couple of months, I have upgraded to 8GB of RAM and an SSD and work on VS inside a Fusion VM.

You can also load your BootCamp into Fusion now, and I think thats a great option. You can load BootCamp directly when you really need the processing power, or log into BootCamp from Fusion for regular stuff.

You can email me at latish.sehgal at gmail if you have any questions.

# January 6, 2010 10:47 AM

Alan G said:

@sehgal,

Thanks a lot, very helpful. I will e-mail you with a few more questions later today.

# January 6, 2010 11:15 AM
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