asp.net development on a mac

Well, sort off…

The idea is that you have designer types who hate windows and will get ill with prolonged usage. So as to make sure you have an adequate supply and flow of decent mark up coming your way as a developer it’s in your best interests to ensure designer type is safely ensconced within the comfort zone of single button mice and strange looking speakers.

We use team foundation server, otherwise known as TFS, which helps us to manage the source control of all our development efforts. In addition, it helps us manage work items (tasks and bugs) during software projects.

If you are on a Mac and are working with TFS, you need this:
http://www.teamprise.com/products/explorer/

OK, so you can work with source control and work items, big deal, how do you actually run an asp.net website?. Well, thanks to the wonders of virtualisation you simply run a windows vm with an iis website as required and give it an appropriate host header such as macdebug.projectname.mycompany.net. Ensure FTP server is running on your windows vm with an appropriate login so that you can copy files to this website via ftp from your Mac.

Now, back on your good old macintosh, you create a TFS workspace and get latest on your lovely TFS solution to have the files locally on your mac. You use your favourite text or html editor and work on the files, checking them out and in as required, and doing all your work items, great. Obviously visual studio is the tool of choice for .net development but if all your tasks are around working with content assets, mark up and styling related files then you don’t really need all that overhead.

All you need to do is ensure that for each change you make that you have an action to FTP the file that has been changed across to the IIS website via FTP automatically. This ensures that you have the IIS website running off your latest changes.

Last thing you need to do is create a hosts file entry on your mac to point macdebug.projectname.mycompany.net to the IP address of your windows vm. Then you can fire up safari and browse to http:macdebug.projectname.mycompany.net to see your asp.net website!

I’ll post up some visuals and details on the tools we’re using on the mac when I have them.