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I've just purchased a new MacBook Pro and was looking at installing Windows 7 via Bootcamp, so that i can do Visual Studio development work, but i was thinking it would make more sense to move my non development stuff (email etc) to the Mac and launch Windows 7 via VMWare Fusion. Im also looking at doing iPhone development as well so was wondering if that made more sense?
Has any one had any experience in or run into problems developing in Visual Studio 2008/2010 beta on Windows 2007 (64 or 32 bit) running on VMWare Fusion? Or is the performance that much worse that a dual boot option is the better way to go?
9 Answers
I know this question does not explicitly mention Parallels, but maybe some of my settings/experience there will be transferable to settings with VMWare Fusion. I am running a MacBook Pro running on OS X 10.7.3 with an Intel Core i7 2.2GHz and 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 memory for my RAM. The version of Parallels I am using is Parallels 7.
Some important notes before I go into my configuration:
I am a developer with MSDN access. Under my MSDN account, I haveaccess to Office 2010 including the Mac version (I mention this as,in many cases, Office will be a necessity and therefore an importantconsideration - while I could install both, there's also the cost indisk space). This also meant that cost was less of a concern here asI had access to everything I needed via MSDN.
One other thing I should note is that I would not recommendconverting a VMWare virtual machine to a Parallels virtual machine asI experienced several issues with this and ended up doing a cleaninstall.
- I am developing on both my Mac (via Eclipse and Aptana) and Windows 7 VM (via Visual Studio)
So after about 1 month of configuring my VM, I've come down to a pretty nice configuration where I am experiencing very smooth performance. I have been very happy with this configuration and it's quite convenient over the alternative of rebooting to get to my Windows machine. Below I will address the Parallels settings that I feel have made this successful in addition to the software I am using on the VM, some important items regarding Windows 7 settings and a $1 program I would suggest every Mac owner would benefit from (but really a necessity for anyone using a VM on a Mac):
VM software:
- Windows 7 Ultimate x64
- Visual Studio 2010 Premium w/ plenty of Add-ins such as ReSharper, Mindscape Workbench, NuGet, etc...
- SQL Server 2008 R2
- Expression Blend 4
- Daemon Tools
- Charles Proxy (I would highly recommend this over, or at least in addition to, Fiddler if you are going to be developing on both your Mac and PC - opt-in feature for SSL debugging is very nice - I had to install on both my VM and Mac ... 127.0.0.1 does not resolve to the same place on my Mac and VM)
- IMPORTANT - I have ensured that no services are running at startup via Start->Run-> 'msconfig' - I tend to like using databases like MongoDB and Neo4j and I usually run them as services as this is generally how I will use these databases in production so this could potentially be a bit of a pain to manage if I end up running these on my Windows box (depending on the production settings I'm trying to emulate)
VM settings:
General
- CPUs: 4 (out of 8)
- Memory: 3072 MB (out of 8 GB)
Options
- Performance: Faster Mac (this may not be intuitive, but I've found it has helped eliminate bottlenecks that result in a noisy system and potential overheating issues)
- Enable Adaptive Hypervisor: true
- Tune Windows for speed: true
- Power: Longer battery life (otherwise I run into overheating issues)
Free Space: Automatically compress virtual hard disks: true (this hasn't caused any performance issues for me, so I have kept this on)
All options set to false, Encryption is not on, Undo Disks is set to Disable
- Pause Windows when no applications are open: true
- Web Pages: Open in mac
Email: Open in mac
- Use Crystal Mode: true
- Show Windows notification area in menu bar: false
- Allow applications to switch to full screen: true
Disable Windows Aero: false (you'll get better performance if you disable this, I'm just a very visual person and decided I like to keep Aero on in Coherence mode)
Use Mac OS X Full Screen: true
SmartMouse: Auto
Hardware
- Video Memory: 512 MB (out of 1 GB)
- Enable 3D acceleration: true
- Enable vertical synchronization: true
Mac Software
- Free Memory Pro: Macs have been known to do a terrible job at managing unclaimed memory. At some points I am running my VM (automatically takes up 3 GB with my config so long as an application is running), two instances of Eclipse (different configurations), Aptana, several browser sessions, several terminal sessions, my VPN and my Office applications. At this point my memory may be running around 50-200 mb - I've found if I use Free Memory Pro to clear up my memory once or twice per day that my Mac still runs without ANY excessive noise or heat and stays around 1.2 GB of free memory even with all the above mentioned applications being open :) IMHO, Macs should come with this program for free, but the next time you're on a late night trip to Wendy's...just forgo one of those $1 menu 5 piece nuggets and buy this program instead - it's totally worth it
I've used a Win7 virtual machine on VMware Fusion 3.0, on both a Mac Pro and a MacBook Pro. I haven't had any performance problems, the virtual machine performance on both systems was very good. I had the best results with Win7 when I configured the virtual machine to have 1 GB of RAM. (Full disclosure: I work on VMware Fusion.)
I haven't personally tried to run Visual Studio in a VM but people who have done so have told me that, as long as the source code you are compiling is stored on the virtual hard disk, build times are good, although they are slightly slower than native performance.
I have heard that storing the code on a 'network' drive (either an HGFS share or an NFS/CIFS share on the host, accessed via a virtual ethernet device) is a bad idea. Apparently the build performance is pretty bad in this configuration.
Hope this helps!
Jason
I convinced my work a while back to get me a Mac Pro instead of the intended, comparable, Lenovo (they bought in on the whole idea because it ended up being about $800.00 cheaper, macs aren't always the most expensive :) )
I'd been using Fusion over Parallels, due to my original experience with the early versions. I have a Windows 7 x64 VM that I use for Visual Studio, and offload everything else that I can to the OS X. It had been working great. VS2008 loaded up quick, builds where quick etc. etc.
Lately I've been using VS2010 and I've noticed a significant performance hit. I decided to give Parallels another go due to all of the latest reviews about performance with version 5. Both Parallels and Fusion work great, but there is a very noticeable performance difference with VS2010 on Parallels vs Fusion.
So to your original question I think you'd be good just virtualizing Windows for development, if you can offload much of your other work onto OS X. Performance has come a long way with Fusion/Parallels and it's a pain to continually reboot to switch your OS for the performance bump. If you're using VS2010 I might recommend Parallels right now simply because of slowdown you get with Fusion. (I think this may be related to VS2010 using WPF which may be faster inside Parallels)
I've done both, using Win7 betas, and ultimately preferred using Boot Camp. Admittedly, this is on a 13' MacBook Aluminum (the model issued late in 2008) with 2GB of RAM.
VMWare performance was quite good, and very impressive, but because my dev stack didn't have full reign of the machine, it felt just pokey enough to annoy me. (Understand that my dev stack was a touch more than VS -- I had VS, SQL Express, CruiseControl.NET, etc.)
I felt the performance under Boot Camp was considerably better -- but this is to be expected, as you're talking about native performance. Boot Camp reboots you into Windows, whereupon Windows is the only OS running, and has full access to the machine.
Naturally, your mileage may vary, and performance is much more in the 'feel' than the metrics. You may find VM performance perfectly dandy. You may find it a bit pokey. You may find that it's good enough given that it doesn't require a full reboot and you can still run your Mac apps alongside the Windows environment. You may prefer the reboot method. Only you can make the final trade-off determination.
If I'm doing something quick I run Windows from my BootCamp partition using VMWare Fusion 2.0.6. If I'm going to be doing some serious debugging or fixing I reboot using BootCamp. BootCamp is much faster, but if most of my time is going to be spent rebooting twice I'll opt for Fusion.
On the down side, Fusion doesn't see all of the cores my Mac Pro (I can only assign up to 2 cores to it when I'd happily assign 4-6 processors.) so using BootCamp definitely maximizes the resources XP has access to.
I cannot comment on Windows 7 (or even Vista) running on Fusion but I did use Visual Studio 2008 on Win XP inside Fusion and it ran great, even on just a MacBook. I don't want to be the guy asking why you want to do that but... why do you need to have Win7 as opposed to XP?
The main reason I went with XP versus Vista was extra burden Vista (and Win7) put on the graphics card, memory, and the hard disk. Now you'll obviously be in a better position with a MacBook Pro and its additional graphics capabilities; but there is no way around the additional memory and copious amounts of random HD access that Vista and Win7 impose. Yes, you can turn off many of the features that cause the memory and disk usage but even then the tax seems to be higher than it was in XP. Enough about 'why Win7'.
From a performance perspective you'll want to have lots of RAM and a fast HD. I upgraded to 4GB and a nice 7200rpm HD and my performance was great (often better than running native on an aging Athlon dual-core machine). The ability to run VS and still use all my favorite mac programs is something I still miss (I no longer have the MacBook) and I'd highly recommend that setup.
I have used Vista 64 + Visual Studio 2008 in both BootCamp and VMWare Fusion modes and both perform well. If I was 'playing around' with some code and not coding intently I could do it in Fusion without any significant performance hit. If I was focusing on my code and needed to get something done, I would reboot into BootCamp mode. This not only ensured that all my resources were dedicated to Vista/Visual Studio, it also helps ensure that nothing in Mac-Land would distract me from working.
Important
The biggest tip I can give you though is if your MBP has dual video cards, and you boot into Windows using BootCamp, Windows will use the more powerful video card. This creates additional heat and your MBP will start to warm up. Normally in Mac-Land the fans will speed up to compensate but in Windows-BootCamp there is nothing to tell the fans to speed up and your MBP will start getting VERY warm.
There is a simple solution that works well though. In Mac-Land, look for an app called SMC Fan Control (you can find it on macupdate.com). Install it and before you boot into Windows using BootCamp, go to Mac Preferences, find SMC, and default your fans to spin at something like 4500 rpm. It will make a bit more noise but will still be reasonably quiet. Now, do not shutdown OS-X, do a Restart, hit the BootCamp key at the right time and go into Windows. By performing a Restart the fan controller on the motherboard will still think it needs to spin the fans at the new setting and it will continue to do so until you shutdown the MBP completely or reboot to OS-X and change the setting down to a slower speed (I run about 1300 normally). This makes development from the couch in BootCamp much more enjoyable as you won't find your clothes being ironed while you develop.
While I cannot speak to running Windows or Visual Studio in a VM on a Mac in Fusion, I can speak to the part about iPhone development (which requires Xcode and Mac OS X) in a Parallels VM.
I do iOS development with Xcode running in a Parallels (9, 10, and 11) virtual machine on a MacBook Pro Retina with terabyte flash drive.
Generally this works very well. The biggest plus having all my work-related stuff in one single environment. Specifically, Apple stores security keys in the Keychain. Trying to extract that from a real Mac and re-install on another is a mystery and a pain. With a VM, I make occasional manual backups locally and/or to an external drive. Getting a new Mac, or switching to another Mac just means one big file copy, then I'm up and running.
I even use the Notes app and Reminders app within that VM for my development work. I do not activate iCloud within that VM, so it just stays local to the VM.
With Mountain Lion running as the Guest OS in the virtual machine worked so well that I found myself getting confused about when I was in the real Mac and when I was in the virtual Mac. In the VM, I had to switch my Dock to the right-side of the screen to differentiate from the real Mac’s left-side Dock.
I am sure there is some performance penalty when running in the VM, but it went unnoticeable to me. I imagine the speedy flash drive saves so much time that it more than makes up for any overhead of running the VM. Overall, this is the fastest development environment I have ever used. With Mountain Lion, that is… read on.
CAVEAT:Mavericks, Yosemite, and El Capitan run noticeably slower as a guest VM. I have confirmed that in the latest and prior versions of both Parallels and Fusion, neither product makes graphics hardware acceleration available to Mac OS X as a guest OS. They do for Windows as a Guest OS, but not for Mac OS X (ironically).
So everything graphical runs slower. Menus drop down slower, and as you drag your mouse pointer through the menus items, they highlight and draw more slowly. Moving windows is not quite immediate. Animations can be herky-jerky. Scrolling is kind of hyper-active, a series of small visual updates rather than smooth. All-in-all, it is not a show-stopper for me, at least not yet. (I've only recently updated the VM from Mountain Lion.)
Why was Lion and Mountain Lion so performant visually while the later Mac OSes are slow? From what I learned in a brief tech note and email from Parallels company, Apple provided a shim with Lion/Mountain Lion. They had some library that helped to substitute for the lack of graphics hardware acceleration. This library is no longer available with the place-named OS X versions, only with the feline-named OS X versions.
While it does work, there are some gotchas with the VMWare Fusion 3 + Bootcamp usage.
Mainly the authentication of Win7 needs to be done over the silly MS phone system. Otherwise authentication is only valid on one side (native boot or VMWare).
Also, the hard disk seems to blink rather long after a Win7 VMWare boot but maybe that's 'normal'.
Have min.4GB of physical memory - works with 2GB but is dead slow. My current VM setup is 1420MB and 2 cores for VM. That ends up using around 2GB of memory for VMWare altogether (leaving another 2GB for my OS X host).
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What's New in 7.8
Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8 Releases
- May 13, 2019 – Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8.4
- March 12, 2019 – Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8.3
- February 28, 2019 – Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8.2
- February 22, 2019 – Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8.1
- February 20, 2019 – Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8
Release Highlights
This release focuses on improving the quality in Visual Studio for Mac through bug fixes, performance improvements, and reliability improvements.
We also updated the version of NuGet to 4.8, .NET Core SDK to 2.1.504, and .NET Core Runtime 2.1.8
Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8 (7.8.0.1624)
released February 20, 2019
Shell
- We fixed an issue where custom key bindings for Remove Unused and Sort (Usings) don't work.
- We fixed an issue where switching from the application and returning, does not focus on the editor correctly.
- We fixed an issue where the cursor in editor window is lost when switching applications.
- We fixed an issue where focusing out/into Visual Studio changes the default focused element on the UI.
- We fixed an issue where Visual Studio for Mac would fail to track file changes for files in certain folders.
- We fixed an issue where Visual Studio for Mac doesn't remember opened files.
- We fixed an issue where the Toolbar selector for build configuration is disabled.
- We fixed an issue where adding a new folder to a project does not allow instant renaming.
- We fixed an issue where Start Debugging after Start without Debugging results in an exception for ASP.Net projects.
- We fixed a performance issue with build output search.
- The Run Item command on the Solution Explorer has been renamed to Run Project.
- We fixed an issue where the welcome page is shown when loading a solution from finder.
.NET Core
- We updated to .NET Core 2.1.8 to include a security update.
- We fixed an issue where the create button doesn't create new project for .NET Core 3.0 preview 2.
- We fixed an issue where .NET Core 3.0 can be selected in the New Project dialog when it is not supported.
- We removed the VB.NET option from .NET Core projects.
ASP.NET Core
- We fixed an issue where the Folder profile would be created with 'Default' configuration instead of 'Release'.
Web Tools
- We fixed an issue where Publish to Azure creates a profile with the wrong name.
- We fixed an issue where application arguments are not passed to the Azure Functions host.
- We added the following additional Azure Functions templates
- CosmosDB trigger
- EventHub trigger
- IoT Hub trigger
- SendGrid trigger
- ServiceBus Queue trigger
- ServiceBus Topic trigger
- We fixed an issue where it was not possible to publish to Azure API App instances.
Xamarin
- We updated the Xamarin Test Cloud agent NuGet version.
- We fixed an issue where the View Archives command would appear in .NET Core projects.
Xamarin.Forms
- IntelliSense in Xamarin.Forms XAML files for FontFamily is now available.
Designers
- We fixed an issue where the toolbox regressed Android designer usage.
- We fixed an issue when attempting to drag and drop controls to iOS storyboards from the Tool Box after searching for controls does not work.
Xamarin.Android
- We fixed an issue where the JDK notification was shown on the welcome page, even for non-Android projects.
- We fixed an issue where launching Visual Studio for Mac without any Java installed shows 2 system prompts to install Java.
- We fixed an issue where the Android resource update could occur at the same time as a build which could then cause build issues.
- We fixed an issue where Visual Studio for Mac would fail to upload APK to Acer Chromebook R11.
- We fixed an issue where new Android apps have uppercase letters in the package name.
- We fixed an issue where 'Your project is not referencing the 'Mono.Android.Version=v8.1' framework' when AndroidUseLatestPlatformSDK is true.
- We fixed an issue where Visual Studio for Mac does not recognize
AndroidManifest
in specific build configurations.. - We fixed an issue where opening the Report A Problem dialog also displays 'Install JDK' dialog.
- We fixed an issue where the Google Play SDK warning is shown even when publishing Ad-Hoc.
Xamarin.iOS
- It is now possible to choose .pdf files for image assets that do not support vector images.
- We fixed an issue where Visual Studio for Mac erroneously indicates that a Xamarin.Mac property is unavailable.
- We fixed an issue where it is not possible to choose devices for named colors in the asset catalog.
- We fixed an issue where the iOS simulator is no longer brought to front when starting a debug session.
- We fixed an issue where Native References not working in iOS library projects and appear to be ignored.
- We fixed an issue where deleting a Native Reference does not delete the the file on disk.
- We fixed an issue where the Debugger doesn't connect to a keyboard extension on any device.
Xamarin.Mac
- We fixed an issue where .xib templates seem to need
customObjectInstantitationMethod='direct'
added. - We fixed an issue where it is not possible to change the target framework version for Xamarin.Mac full on re-opening project options.
- We fixed an issue where the project options for a Mac build (classic) shows incorrect UI.
Code Editor
- We fixed an issue where the code fix preview window is too small.
- We fixed an issue where error squiggles were not up to date.
- We fixed an issue where the editor would freeze while typing
- We fixed an issue where Changing the tab would not allow you to search a file
- We fixed an issue where Using statement indenting is incorrect.
- We fixed an issue where Roslyn throws a fatal exception (System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException).
- We fixed an issue where formatting of parameters across multiple lines is incorrect.
- We fixed an issue where the constructor generator would cause Visual Studio for Mac to crash.
- We fixed an issue where smart semicolon placement causes incorrect semicolon placement.
- We fixed an issue where typing can be slow in large files when accessibility is enabled.
- We fixed an issue where a fatal error can occur when trying to navigate inside the editor using VoiceOver.
- We fixed an issue where the caret location in quick fix margin is incorrect.
- We fixed a performance issue where indent correcting is taking up too much time on large files.
- We fixed an issue where Intellisense soft-selection is confusing.
- We fixed an issue where Visual Studio for Mac can't open .targets files.
- We fixed an issue where the display updates partially when commenting a collapsed method.
- We fixed an issue where C# syntax highlight doesn't work for some of the keywords.
- We fixed an issue where invoking some snippets from the toolbox in .cs files leads to poorly formatted code.
- We fixed an issue where pressing Down to choose the closing tag completion in XAML IntelliSense closes the completion window.
- We fixed an issue where the file 'redacted' could not be opened.
- We fixed an issue where sometimes pasting fails in XAML files.
- We fixed an issue where, when adding an attribute via Intellisense, it does not trim 'Attribute' from the name.
- We fixed an issue where code suggestion does the wrong thing when
(
is pressed after a stray arrow key.
NuGet
- We fixed an issue where Visual Studio for Mac crashes after 'Could not add packages' error.
- We updated the version of NuGet to 4.8.
- NuGet package diagnostic warnings are now shown in the Solution Explorer. Any diagnostics warnings will be rendered with a warning icon and the full text of the warning available as a tool tip.
- We fixed a set of issues with NuGet:
- problem while restoring NuGet packages which don't have stable version.
- The VS4Mac bundle nuget version is too old: 4.3.1.
- Referencing packages conditionally using variable does not work correctly.
- Xamarin.Forms app with multi target framework library referenced fail to build.
- Visual Studio Mac Csproj build not support Item contidion.
- Support conditional NuGet PackageReferences in multi-targeting projects.
- Show per-framework dependencies when multi-targeting.
- VS cannot build F# dotnet core solution.
- Nuget restore ignore build targets.
- NuGet restores the wrong version of Microsoft.AspNetCore.App.
Debugger
- We fixed an issue where the debugger would fail when running on an external console on Mojave.
Test Tools
- We fixed an issue where xUnit Fact 'DisplayName' not shown in test explorer if the name has a period at the end.
- We fixed an issue where the text editor unit test integration ('Unit test 'name' could not be loaded') would fail.
- We fixed a performance issue where the 'Test Results' pane has bad performance when very large amounts of text are shown.
- We fixed an issue where the unit test integration in the editor does not properly trigger test cases.
- We fixed an issue that could cause xunit to fail to restore.
Visual Studio For Mac Solution Items
F#
- We fixed an issue where open statements for F# must be manually added when pasting/writing code.
- We fixed an issue where new F# projects shows IntelliSense errors.
- We fixed an issue for F# projects where Visual Studio for Mac overwrites the project GUID to be lowercase instead of uppercase.
Project System
- We fixed an issue where the copy & paste of a XAML file causes a disassociation between the .xaml and .xaml.cs files.
- We fixed an issue where files are being added to ItemGroup.Compile(Remove) and this related issue - Error type of namespace not found.
- We fixed an issue where an invalid C# file is created with a new library project.
- We fixed an issue where it is not possible to create a culture specific .resx file through the 'New File ..' menu in the Solutions Explorer context menu.
Assembly Browser
- We fixed an issue where the Assembly Browser shows the wrong icon for properties.
- We fixed an issue where
System.DayOfWeek
enum (Wednesday
) does not appear to be assigned a value.
Accessibility
- We fixed a number of accessibility issues in this release, including several VoiceOver issues in the Debugger and in creating iOS developer certificates, and Keyboard issues in the Android SDK Manager.
Other
- We fixed an issue where unchecking the Organize Using > Place System directives first setting does not save.
- We fixed an issue where Visual Studio for Mac is not remembering settings.
- We fixed an issue where Checking for updates can result in multiple prompts to sign in.
Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8.1.4
released February 22, 2019
- We fixed an issue where Visual Studio for Mac becomes unresponsive when selecting two column view.
Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8.2.1
released February 28, 2019
- We fixed an issue where Debugger features sometimes don't work as expected with Unity.
Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8.3.2
released March 12, 2019
Visual Studio For Mac Logs
- This release contains an updated 4.8 NuGet Client, which in turn closes a NuGet Client vulnerability.
- We fixed an issue where Using Git to publish an existing project to a new remote repository was not working.
- We fixed an issue where Git remote operations were failing in Visual Studio for Mac:.
- We fixed an issue where Tooltips not being shown for F# solutions.
- We fixed an issue where The Report a Problem dialog crashes Visual Studio for Mac when entering details.
- We fixed an issue where Visual Studio for Mac crashes while using Report a Problem if the debugger connection is lost.
- We fixed an issue where Two sign in popup windows would show if you weren't signed in and tried to Report a Problem.
- We fixed an issue causing warnings about missing icons to show up in the log files when using Report a Problem.
- We fixed an issue preventing build messages from displaying in the Build Output window after building Docker Compose projects.
Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.8.4.1
released May 13, 2019
- This release fixes an issue where (Visual Studio for Mac 7.8.3 crashes after loading a second solution)[https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/509716/visual-studio-783-build2-crashes-after-loading-a-s.html].
Feedback
We would love to hear from you! You can report a problem through the Report a Problem option in the Visual Studio for Mac IDE, and track your feedback in the Developer Community portal. For suggesting new features you can use Suggest a Feature, these are also tracked in the Developer Community.
Blogs
Take advantage of the insights and recommendations available in the Developer Tools Blogs site to keep you up-to-date on all new releases and include deep dive posts on a broad range of features.
Visual Studio 2017 for Mac Release Notes History
You can view prior versions of Visual Studio 2017 for Mac release notes on the Release notes history page.