News

Novell Ships Mono Tools for Visual Studio 2.0

Visual Studio add-in extends support to Mac OS X and features improved debugging and deployment.

• By Michael Desmond
• July 29, 2010

Novell today announced that it is shipping the release version of Mono Tools for Visual Studio 2.0, the add-in module for Microsoft's Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) that enables developers to write cross-platform .NET applications.

Mono Tools 2.0 advances the cross-platform appeal of the tooling, adding full support for development of .NET applications bound for the Mac OS X operating system. The new version also features an improved debugger that provides feature parity across all targeted OSes. In Mono Tools 1.0, applications targeting anything other than an x86-based Linux machine were unable to use the native debugger. A new debugger now extends full debug support to other platforms and targets, says Joseph Hill, product manager for Mono at Novell.

"That engine runs anywhere that Mono runs. Now we were able to turn around and add that to our Visual Studio product," Hill said. "Our message is you get Mono Tools for Visual Studio, get Mono on Windows, and do application work from there. Then you don't have to ask a Windows guy to worry about any other operating system."

Hill said Mono Tools 2.0 also provides faster deployment, using compression and uploading only changed files at build time. MonoTouch 2.0 also adds a profile manager that helps eliminate repetitive configuration tasks. "When you go to deploy debugging now, it's easier and it's faster," Hill said.

Mono Tools Professional Edition costs $99 and is targeted to individual developers, while Mono Tools Enterprise Edition costs $249 per seat. An Ultimate Edition, which costs $2499, bundles five enterprise developer licenses and provides limited commercial license to redistribute Mono. A 30 day trial version of Mono Tools 2.0 is also available for download here.