Will an Application programmed in C# work on a Mac?

9 replies
I am looking to have a desktop application developed soon. If the programming is done in C# will the application be able to run on a Mac or Linux OS?
#application #mac #programmed #work
  • Profile picture of the author TrafficMystic
    yes but you need to re-compile it against mono which does work on the mac. Do a search on 'visual studio lite' in google.
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    • Profile picture of the author Spencer Haws
      okay, thanks! I will have to look into that...
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      • Profile picture of the author LynxSI
        TrafficMystic is citing the most optomistic perspective. Mono will support the core application framework, but if you're application accesses any 3rd party libraries which call native APIs or if you call any native APIs you can run into problems.

        The most common "real world example" of this is that a programmer will use a 3rd party tool for reports or charting or user interface which pinvoke a native API call to windows.

        So double check with your developer what other dependencies you might end up with.
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        • Profile picture of the author windfinder
          There's a tool called MOMA to check how much of a regular .Net assebly runs unmodified on Mono.
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        • Profile picture of the author dotVince
          Originally Posted by LynxSI View Post

          TrafficMystic is citing the most optomistic perspective. Mono will support the core application framework, but if you're application accesses any 3rd party libraries which call native APIs or if you call any native APIs you can run into problems.

          The most common "real world example" of this is that a programmer will use a 3rd party tool for reports or charting or user interface which pinvoke a native API call to windows.

          So double check with your developer what other dependencies you might end up with.
          LynxSI is correct.
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  • Profile picture of the author garyk1968
    Yep as LynxSi says its typically your dependancies and certainly any database access is going to cause an issue if its local rather than remote. Mono has limited support for cocoa. ObjectiveC is a superset of C so if you aren't relying too heavily on the .net framework it would be possible to make code changes and compile in Xcode but you would have to rebuild the UI using Interface Builder.
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  • Profile picture of the author hhunt
    As a developer, I always use a language that is platform independent, which in my case in Python. You may not be a Python user, but writing your app in C# will definitely make it not portable.

    Instead, use one of Apple languages for it.

    Good luck
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  • Profile picture of the author unsmashed
    It won't run natively, but you could use Parallels or VMWare on the mac to run windows and your windows app.
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