Programming for Windows Phone 8 (and beyond) on GNU/ Linux

Question

Since the VideoLAN programmers do write Windows 8/RT/Phone apps using Linux based operating systems and GCC I was wondering, whether there is some progress in regard to how to program for Windows in a Linux environment, where Windows is used only for testing. How easy/ hard is it, to program a Windows RT (modern UI whatever)/ Windows Phone 8 application on Linux?

I imagine a situation, where you use tools such as Git, Emacs/ VIM, GCC, Mono etc. to do the job. How about submitting the app without Visual Studio?

I ask, because Microsoft open-sourced so much stuff now, using Linux based OS for development could (should?) become feasible while developing apps for their systems. Does anybody have some behind the scenes information on this? It is very hard to find some relevant info.

Note I edited this question to be more "straight to the point"

Links:

This is the VLC Kickstarter page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1061646928/vlc-for-the-new-windows-8-user-experience-metro

Answer 1

I'm a software engineer at Microsoft so I think I could give you some insights on this. From a testing perspective, you should definitely have a Windows machine to test against. You can install Windows 8 as a VM using Virtual Box or something similar. You could also remote into a Windows machine if you have access to one. Visual Studio can't be installed in Linux, as you know, but there are other C#/ASP.NET/etc. IDE's that you can use natively on Linux. Look into Wine for Linux: http://www.winehq.org/about/. It may help you somewhat. As an aside, developing applications for Windows will be getting easier in the coming months. As was announce at MS Build, Microsoft is moving towards a universal app store that will make your app run on all Windows devices: PC, tablet, phone, and Xbox. This doesn't help with developing apps on Linux, but if you're a Windows developer, you might want to keep your eyes open about the new universal-style apps.