using Visual Studio for Windows to develop applications for MacOS

awesim

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Oct 26, 2006
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hello everyone..

i need to develop an application that will be running on a MacOS.. but i have no prior experience on these systems.. ive worked on visual studio 2000 for quite a long time.. but ive heard that visual studio 2003 allows developing cross-platform applications.. is this a solution to my problem? if so, can anyone help me better understand what i would need to do? if not, i would appreciate if i were shown an alternate path..

here's what i need to do..

an application that would be reading and saving files on the hard disk.. the development platform HAS to be windows.. the deployment platform IS going to be MacOS..

thanks a million..

asim sohail
 
.Net Framework only supports Windows platform. What you heard about cross-platform was C++ unmanaged.
 
i thought .Net programs could run on any platform provided the Framework's installed (like Mono for Linux)
 
Mono doesn't support all features that the .NET Framework supports. If Mono can execute assemblies compiled in VS (I'm not sure if it can I and I couldn't find anything definitive in a quick search of their site) then there is certainly no guarantee that it will support all the features used in the original code. If you want to write apps for Mono then you should use Mono tools.
 
hmmm.. i tried a search for mono and visual studio.. i got a promising link.. http://mac.sillydog.org/dev/visual_studio.php.. tell me what you guys think about it..

what i understand about this link so far is.. that you use dot net to create an executable.. but when you need to run that executable on a mac system, you use the mono support environment..

ive heard that java is truly platform independant.. if that is so.. doesnt it mean that visual studio j# applications too will be able to run on any platform? what does dot net being platform independant actually mean?

on the side note.. id like to mention and ask something that i dont think belongs here.. but since this is the starting point of this thread.. i dont want littering all forums with one single question.. :)

im know javascript pretty well.. i know that file io can be done using this scripting language too.. but i know only how it can be done on a windows system.. can something similar be done on mac with javascript? can anyone point me towards where i can get more info on mac systems? i live in pakistan.. and here almost 99.99% people use ibm compatible systems with windows.. the rest use linux or unix.. NO ONE uses mac os.. so i have absolutely no way to check any theories..

please.. im in desperate need for help..

thanks a million..

asim sohail..
 
That certainly does look promising and I guess it answers the question of whether "genuine" .NET assemblies can be run on Mono. I do wonder what happens if you use a .NET feature that isn't supported on Mono though. As for platform independence, it simply means that something can be executed regardless of the platform on which it's being executed. Java is essentially platform independent because there is a Java Runtime Environment for just about every platform. Each JRE is written for a specific platform and it interacts with the platform on which it's running. The Java app then interacts with the JRE only. Every JRE provides the same interface to applications so the same application can run on any platform for which there'sa JRE. The same is basically true of the .NET Framework. .NET apps can run on any platform for which there's a .NET Framework because they interact with the Framework only, not that actual system. Microsoft only creates the .NET Framework for Windows, but Mono and other similar projects are essentially versions of the .NET Framework for other platforms.
 
Good tip awesim, but know the MONO project is not directly related to .Net Framework, it's not another platform version of it, but a good research project in the process of porting the .Net Framework libraries to different platforms, see the MONO FAQ about this. The MONO compiler only supports C# language as I see it. Your tip solves this when compiling from Windows if all the objects used is supported on MONO.

J#.Net is also .Net. Same "rules" as other .Net languages. J# has the same "general syntax" as Java but not fully and it's origin is MS J++, not Java. They are not interoperable.

About MACs I can't help you, I have only ever seen one such computer so far and it was like 10yrs ago.. :) I see they have currently about 4% market share so many people do use it somewhere in the world. Javascript on Mac is not within the scope of this forums site.
 
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