What limitations (if any) would I face developing asp.net on OSX? (in 2015/2016) [closed]

Question

I'm a diehard mac lover but my day to day work is shifting towards the .net stack, specifically c#, asp.net mvc, entity framework, multiple project class libraries, ms test, sql server, deployment to azure.

In light of the recent cross platform advancements in .net, what issues (if any) would I face now and later on as I get deeper into development? Is anyone else doing this?

I've installed VSCode (https://code.visualstudio.com) and am able to build and run an asp.net mvc web app using coreclr. That seems to work very well and is closer to the web development experience I'm used to on a mac. I understand I also get vs.net style debugging with VSCode but I've yet to test that.

SQL Server I realise will be a problem, I'm considering either running it in a VM or using a cloud based dev instance.

I've also trialed running full vs.net in a VM but on my 13" MBP i5 8GB it gets a tiny bit sluggish at times under VMWare Fusion, so not ideal. VSCode also gives me a dev experience much closer to what I've been doing previously from my mac (simple text editor, terminal etc) so I prefer that anyway.

So, can I do this? is cross platform .net ready for mid sized asp.net apps? what problems may I run into? I appreciate any feedback.

Answer 1

Since you've already installed VS Code on your Mac, you already know that you can work on ASP.NET projects natively on your Mac. Just keep in mind you can run the cross-platform .NET Core 5 on your Mac, but not the full .NET Framework. So, if you need to work on any projects that need the full framework (such as .NET 4.x), you will need to use Windows. It doesn't matter if it's small, midsized or large enterprise apps.

As you suggested, you can run Windows on your Mac. But instead of VMWare, I would suggest Parallels instead. Running Windows on your Mac will allow you to run the full Visual Studio with the full .NET framework if that's what you need. It would also let you run SQL Server on Windows inside your Mac.

Hope that helps! :)