Starting from Unity 2018.1 we will be shipping Visual Studio for Mac instead of MonoDevelop-Unity on macOS. On Windows will continue to ship Visual Studio 2017 Community and no longer ship MonoDevelop-Unity. With the (currently experimental).NET 4.6 scripting runtime upgrade in Unity we are moving towards supporting many of the new exciting C# features available in C# 6.0 and beyond.
It’s very important for us at Unity that we also provide a great C# IDE experience to accompany the new C# features. On Windows, we ship Visual Studio 2017 Community with Unity and it already supports the latest C# features and C# debugging on the new.NET 4.6 scripting runtime. MonoDevelop-Unity 5.9.6 will be removed from the Unity 2018.1 Windows installer, as it does not support these features.
Apr 29, 2015 - Visual Studio Code (I call it VSCode, myself) is a new free. This was definitely the wow! Moment yesterday, but I wish this was named a bit different. I've just tried VSCode today on a Mac, yes it looks very promised. A preview of Visual Studio 2019 for Mac is also available. It still looks like Visual Studio for the most part. But notice how the title bar is now used for the menu bar to give a little more.
To support the latest C# features and C# debugging on the new.NET 4.6 scripting runtime on macOS, we are replacing MonoDevelop-Unity 5.9.6 with Visual Studio for Mac. To summarize, we are making the following changes. Removing MonoDevelop-Unity 5.9.6 from the Unity 2018.1 installer on macOS and Windows and no longer supporting it for Unity development starting from Unity 2018.1. Including as the only C# IDE on macOS in Unity 2018.1. On Windows we will continue to include and no longer include MonoDevelop-Unity as an alternative. Supporting both the latest C# features and debugging of C# scripts on the.NET 4.6 scripting runtime. MonoDevelop-Unity users on macOS can Visual Studio for Mac and start using it today.
C# IDE Alternatives Besides Visual Studio for Mac and Visual Studio 2017 Community, there are now a few other C# IDE alternatives available. (Windows, macOS, Linux) Unity supports opening scripts in Visual Studio Code when selected as an external script editor in the preferences.
See for details. The following also have to be installed for C# code editing and Unity C# debugging support. (Only required on macOS). (Does currently not support debugging on the.NET 4.6) (Windows, macOS, Linux) Unity supports opening scripts in JetBrains Rider when selected as an external script editor in the preferences. Rider is built-in on top of ReSharper and includes most of its features.
It also supports all the latest C# 6.0 features as well C# debugging on the.NET 4.6 scripting runtime in Unity. See for details.
Coming from Monodevelop/Xamarin – VS2017 is so intimidating. It seems very advanced in comparison. But mere weeks of practice made me reconsider my opinion. It’s very undewhelming. Increasingly frustrating.
Productivity in VS is just abysmal. Great way to sabotage your project (there is whole small industry based on patching holes in this program for god sake). This is why Visual Studio Code + few C# extensions is such an amazing RELIEF. I advertise giving it a try (with intellisense enabled) and hope Unity reconsider switching to VSCode, support it (maybe even replace Monodevelop with) and ditch Visual Studio misunderstanding before it will harm newcomers to Unity platform. I say this because Monodevelop was easy to start coding in.
VS2017 is definately not and I have hard time imagining this won’t deal any blow to future Unity user growth as consequence. I guess dropping MonoDevelop is a good idea. But I hope you can nudge Xamarin to do work with Microsoft to improve Visual Studio in the following areas made MD do the right things for Unity programming: – Sort Intellisense suggestions by inheritance instead of everything alphabetically. (Helpful since our scripts often inherits too many members from MonoBehaviour and Component and UnityEngine.Object.) – Not show deprecated/obsolete members in Intellisense suggestions (UnityEngine has a LOT of these). – intellisense according to PascalCase initials. (“ueng” for “UnityEngine” and “ued” for “UnityEditor”). This thread is flooded with opinions so I’m floating the one useful info by Andrej: “VSCode has very little intellisense by design.
It’s supposed to be improved by extensions. I’m using “C#”, “C# Extensions”, “C# Fix format” and “C# XML Documentation Comments”. With these extensions it’s even better than Visual Studio Community. So far my experience has been: opening a file is even faster than monodev, autocomplete is as aggressive, debug works. If UT can package this with the extensions that Andrej listed, I think we’re in good shape.
Thank you for the advance notice. I have 3 Questions: I’m using MAcOS 10.10 which isn’t compatible with Visual Studio for Mac. Will i still be able to download and use MonoDevelop with Unity 2018? Also, will I be able to edit UnityScript in VIsual Studio for Mac when I eventfully upgrade my MacOS? I know you are deprecating UnityScrip, but Nimian Legends BrightRidge is going to take a while to convert all my UnityScripts, and right now i am focusing on game updates.
Finally the only upgrade option for me is High Sierra. Is it safe to Run Unity 5.6+ in High Sierra now?
There is a large number of “real” game developers who think unity devs are not “real” game devs. And then you will find systems programmers who think our “real” game dev friends are not “real” programmers.
Then there will be a world class Theortical computer Scientist who would think system programming is not “real” computer science. And that same professor would probably have a rival in the pure math department who thinks computer science is not “real” mathematics you see where I’m going? Homo sapiens probably thought Neanderthals are not “real” humans and maybe that’s why they are extinct. It’s natural to think you’re the elite among those who are too similar to you, yet different. I’m not save from this, and I don’t think anybody is. But it’s important to keep it to yourself, since it may distract others, annoy them, make them feel bad about themselves, or worse, mislead the non-experienced learner into thinking that you’re opinion is a fact.
So think about that when you find yourself inclined to disparage those who are similar but not identical to you. Maybe you were joking and I took it too far, I apologize if that was the case. It is unfortunate that MonoDevelop is getting phased out for users that got used to working in it.
I personally use VS but if for whatever reason I would need a backup IDE (there were stretches where VS tools for Unity wouldn’t work no matter what and I had to wait for a patch, it has historically been a very buggy extension) then my best choice would be MonoDevelop. MD could be supported, if there was enough will from Microsoft (influenced by Unity) to push changes from VS4Mac back into MD. Consider this statement: “Visual Studio for Mac is built as a series of components on top of the open source MonoDevelop. When we touch the core, it goes open source, and some of the extensions like Android and iOS development are closed source.” So, why can’t we have Unity support open sourced back into vanilla MonoDevelop?
Visual Studio and Rider and very expensive, professional products. VS community is free for 5 people studios, but what about if you get 6th person onboard? You’re getting into licencing issues, with prohibitive costs of the full product. VS Code is OK IDE for web development. It is nowhere near VS level feature-wise, even with “community extensions” which don’t work right half the time.
It is arguable if VS Code is an adequate replacement for MonoDevelop. At first I was going to be dismissive of your post — $250 for a perpetual Rider license isn’t a ton of money, but if you’re a 6 person studio without a cash base and individuals have other day-time jobs, dropping MonoDevelop really is killing a critical tool. And, I agree, VS Code isn’t there yet. Yes, it’s pretty good, but for it to be a reliable drop-in-replacement with feature parity to MonoDevelop, Unity would need to invest in making and maintaining an official plugin. FWIW, Rider is fantastic. If your individual team members are up for it, they can buy a perpetual license that THEY own for $140. But your company cannot reimburse them for it, unfortunately.
You do realize that you don’t need to upgrade to the latest Unity version if you don’t want to right? Everything before 2018.1 can still be downloaded at Unity’s download archive and you can still use Monodevelop in those versions. It’s sudden but they aren’t forcing you to to upgrade I don’t understand why so many people are complaining, they even did the same thing when they announced that they were deprecating UnityScript. I say good on Unity for at least actually removing Monodevelop instead of just deprecating it and having it as baggage for the next year or so. While I can respect the decision, I am beginning to get disappointed at Unity’s removal of support for many of the platforms I use for development. It first started with the removal of Unity Player’s support for Windows Vista (I’m a broke student, it’s all I can afford:) ) and was quickly followed by the removal of 32-Bit Support for the Editor with the 2017 series.
MonoDevelop has always been my choice of IDE for C#, and I really wish that instead of removing support for all of these features, you guys would try and take the time to allow developers to choose what they want supported by their editor. I can respect that you guys may not have enough people to carry on support for all of these things, but I would really like to see it happen. Just my two cents:). I wish a better support for Visual Studio Code it’s lightweight and not so bloated than VS - = 1 GB installation space vs. VSC = 200mb install size VSC is much faster and has!!!
VSC has a extension in Asset Store that the UNity3d people always forget!!!! VSCode is the name and is a helper for Unity3d can not understand the low information from the writer here is he from Unity3d??? Also what is up with the forums long time now so many unanswered questions nobody from Unity3d there to help anymore??? To me & i’m a long time User since version 1.5 Unity3d is grown to fast to big and doesn’t know whats up everywhere no support etc i know that problem from Macromedia (creator of Flash etc) here it looks like the same now maybe too many Macromedia people working @ Unity3d to me it looks more like the beginn of the end not happy @ all with Unity3d and the famous Asset Store where you don’t can give non working Assets back what is this for a time??? We need alternatives soon. Monodevelop coming with Unity was pretty useful for the assembly browsing not being total utter shit like Microsofts Visual Studio version which is just well useless garbage adding to already bloated IDE. Visual studio solution explorer is kinda rubbish like with half a dozen tree expands for.Plugins,.Editorto me is completely pointless as they are already in further Plugin/Editor folder expands already.
But whatever VScode debugging is just bad, and well after the longer startup of VS its good still. At least the scrollmap is better than all the other ide implementations. How VScode has a worse scrollmap than VS even though its MS product is just weird. I always thought the Monodev ide would get better support and improvements with Unity promoting it, instead it got ditched. Oh well whatevs roll out 2018.1 maybe 2019 is the year Unity gets a better full source editor without trailing with some useless that requires launching some third party ide.
VS Code/Mac seems to generally be pretty good and MonoDevelop has been buggy for the past while for sure. However, one point about VS Code/Mac is that unless you are developing software under the OpenSource Initiative you need to start paying $45/month/seat once you have 6 VS Code or qualify as an “enterprise” (have more than 250 pcs or $1 million in revenue/year). Which may lead a lot of indie developers to inadvertently break the licence agreement on VS Code/Mac and run the risk of being sued for not having purchased software that was installed automatically on their computer whether they wanted it or not. Good to see Unity actually removing old things from their platform instead of just deprecating them! Especially since programs like Rider and VS Code were miles ahead of Monodevelop-Unity.
Another thing you guys should remove entirely is the old component references in Monobehaviours, its really annoying when intellisense tells you that there is already a field named rigidbody2D or renderer Hopefully 2018.1 will see a lot of old and deprecated things removed!:D.Cough, cough. UnityScript.Cough.
Rider brought alot of joy back to.NET development for me. It's a very fast IDE hitting the sweet spot between omnisharp and VS for me. It opens to a point where I can start typing in seconds, granted it does not boot up the resharper host with full intellisense particularly fast either but while it does that I have a non blocking editor where I can roam files.
Switching branches and project reloads are effortless. This is a far cry from the almost hourly crashes or minute long lockups in VS.
If Rider crashes it never does to a point where the editor locks up. You might lose resharpers power but again restarting Rider does not take ages taking me out of the zone. Also I have not had this happen since many EAP releases.
Play around a bit with it's setting and Rider also looks the part too: https://twitter.com/Mpdreamz/status/70908676https://twitter.com/Mpdreamz/status/70908676.