在Mac上创建Windows窗体应用程序（.NET Framework）

Question

Im doing work in collage with coding windows form apps. I'm doing it in C# although i don't think that impacts the problem I have.

When at home I wish to continue this coding but I can't as I have a macbook book.

My question is, is there any simple way to be able to code windows form app on a mac book. So far i have not been able to find a way to do this. Is there a way or do i have to save up and buy a laptop and run Windows on it.

Thanks Scott

Answer 1

There's no way to develop for Windows Forms on a platform other that Windows itself. You might use other tech stacks or cross platform toolkits like GTK+ or Eto which can translate the designer code and create Windows Forms applications, but native Windows Forms development is not available due to a huge count of Windows-exclusive PInvokes. No chance here.

However, you don't need to have a Windows laptop to code on a mac - you always have the option to use virtualized desktops where the Windows system runs as a so called "image". Some are free and just require you to put in a Windows installation disk (or disk image) - so you run the installation in that virtualized system and can boot it shutdown it whenever you like. It is literally like having a computer in a computer. There are a lot of virtualization tools like VMWare Player or Oracles VirtualBox . On Mac, Parallels Desktop is very popular. It can integrate virtualized Windows applications to MacOS without having that virtualized image as "box" you connect to. The virtualized windows integrate quite seamlessly into the Mac desktop and support window management commands like App Exposé and Mission Control.

Another great options is to create an account on Microsoft Azure where you can rent virtual Windows systems online to a very low price. The benefit is, that those systems run in the clould and can be accessed from everywhere you'll ever go (as long as you have an internet connection).