back to article Visual Studio running on OS X and Linux for free? SO close

Microsoft has expanded its Visual Studio line of software development tools to platforms other than Windows for the first time. No, Redmond hasn't ported its full Visual Studio IDE. But it has launched a new product in the VS line called Visual Studio Code, which offers some of the tools that Windows platform developers have …

  1. Buzzword

    It seems that Developer Tools unit within Microsoft have their own agenda, separate from head office. Their goal is to ensure survival of their own product (and thus their jobs) even if Windows goes down. Don't tell Nadella.

    1. hplasm
      Paris Hilton

      Yeh-but, no-but...

      If Windows goes down, what will they have to develop for...?

    2. phil dude
      Linux

      some thoughts...

      I would happily PAY for a M$ product if it could meet the following criteria. Please chip in with yours!!!

      1) Use an standard "open" format for input/output (no special XML tags...).

      2) Permit the development of GPL apps (so any libraries used must have a license to support this).

      3) Provide support for bugs that do not require the purchase of a new license.

      4) Accept liability for any harm caused by their software being resident on my system.

      Any others?

      P.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: some thoughts...

        5) Works as advertised. (and I'm being nice here, I could have said "as can be reasonably expected compared to similar, competing products")

      2. David Webb

        Re: some thoughts...

        4) Accept liability for any harm caused by their software being resident on my system.

        Quick question, does any software accept liability for any harm caused by their software being resident on your system?

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: some thoughts...

          Unintentional harm - no.

          Deliberately finding competing products and damaging them ....

        2. phil dude
          Linux

          Re: some thoughts...

          Well if I have the source code, no - AS IS, is fine.

          When I don't have the source code, possibly? This is my wishlist, y'know....!

          This would improve the quality if it was made a more tangible feedback criteria.

          I am author of scientific software - if it is GPL we take no responsibility. If someone uses a web interface, we take no responsibility for the results. In clinical applications there is a heavy dose of caveat emptor...

          I am guessing there is substantial liability attached to planes, vehicles, industrial robots etc....?

          Anybody reading know better examples?

          P.

          1. Lysenko

            Re: some thoughts...

            UK only: Read the "Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977" (which despite the name also involves torts).

            Slapping GPL on your code doesn't get you off the hook if you cause death or personal injury or other losses attributable to fraud or misrepresentation and you can't blanket disclaim away liability for negligence under any circumstances. Disclaimers and offering source code are arguments you can present as a defence, but they are not enough to get a case dismissed out of hand.

            The other point you are missing is "consideration" (payment, essentially). Given that no contract can exist without consideration, giving away a binary for free will probably limit your liability to tort whereas distributing something under GPL and then charging for support, consultancy etc. will bring bring in contract law.

            Too many people seem to think that they can put any provisions (particularly disclaimers) in a contract\license and so long as both parties agree the terms are automatically binding. They aren't; whether contract terms are reasonable or not is a matter for the courts. The liability you want Microsoft to assume would be unenforceable.

            1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

              Re: some thoughts...

              If you are building software that can cause death or injury then YOU are on the hook anyway.

              If you use GPL software you are responsible for any flaws in it in exactly the same way as software you write in-house.

              Interestingly you are also responsible for any flaws in closed software you use - you have a much tougher job demonstrating to the regulators that you have a way of testing the COTS software to show that it doesn't have any flaws and have plans to remedy them. If you don't have a contract with the supplier saying that they WILL fix any flaws you find then your only remedy is to pull your product from the market.

              It is far easier to build (or at least do the regulatory paperwork on) a safety critical system with open source software than closed

              The same applies to hardware - I just spent the equivalent of a nice BMW getting a PC built by a certain CPU maker beginning with "I" - EMC tested.

              It failed - despite the approval stickers all over its case. I now have to modify the PC to make it pass and show that I will apply the same modifications to all the other units I sell.

          2. thames

            Re: some thoughts...

            @Phil dude - "I am guessing there is substantial liability attached to planes, vehicles, industrial robots etc....?"

            I've done a lot of work on industrial software (and hardware), and components like robots are part of a system in a larger machine or manufacturing cell. You design the machine on the assumption that software and hardware has bugs and that something like a robot could go wonky. If the operator can get hurt due to something the robot did, then that's the fault of the person who designed the overall system.

            There are safety components such as light curtains, two-hand controls, safety relays, etc. which are designed to be "fail safe". These tend to be fairly simple things with very limited feature sets. You use these as building blocks to provide safety systems for use with for example your robot. Most complex industrial machines are one-off custom built jobs, so there's no universal "solution" to safety. The real problems must be solved at the individual application level.

            At one time a popular brand of light curtain (used to disable a machine if you pass your hand through the curtain of light) used a software based system that used two different programs running in parallel on two different microprocessors (I think one was a Motorola, and the other an Zilog or Intel). Their later generations evolved to use ASICs to eliminate the software, and I think that everyone else did the same.

            Safety shutdown systems in something like an oil refinery or a large boiler control are another much more complicated story altogether, and I won't go into that.

      3. P. Lee

        Re: some thoughts...

        So, you're happy to accept the "Embrace" part then?

        Does anyone else remember when Windows supported HPFS disks?

        I'd be really careful about supporting organisations which have a vested interest in the destruction of my preferred ecosystem. If MS did not have an OS it wanted to push, I'd be happier, but they do. It would be beneficial for them to give the stuff away for free to stifle the market in IDE's and then gradually make it worse compared to the Windows product. Even if this were pure speculation I'd be nervous, but MS have form in doing this, so I think not.

        Release the tools under a FLOSS license and I'll reconsider. Sell the tools off to a third party and I'll reconsider. Otherwise you can keep your wooden horse.

      4. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. Charles Manning

      All biz units are independent

      Many years ago (1995 or so) I had some connections deep within Microsoft's OS group who were working on Windows NT. They were dual building their code with both Borland and Microsoft compilers and the Borland compiler way producing better output.

      The story I was told was that the MS compiler crowd were not fixing compiler bugs and Dave Cutler finally threw a wobbler and said if MS didn't fix its compilers, then MS compilers would be dropped.

      Big organisations are just umbrellas.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: All biz units are independent

        A little off-topic (in the glorious El Reg tradition) but did they not buy their first C compiler (Aztec or something -- too many dead brain cells, now)? They wrote their Basic and Pascal compilers, I recall.

  2. Neil Barnes Silver badge

    I can't find it...

    The first link has nothing pointing to 'code', the second has downloads for Windows and OSX.

    They seem to have forgotten the Linux bit.

    1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: I can't find it...

      It's right there on visualstudio.com.

      (edit: code.visualstudio.com seems broken now; was working earlier. visualstudio.com works fine. Weird.)

      C.

      1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

        Re: I can't find it...

        Thanks, no idea why I couldn't see it earlier.

        1. Gordon 11

          Re: I can't find it...

          Thanks, no idea why I couldn't see it earlier.
          Did you scroll to the top of the target page - which is where the Linux link is? The scrollbar is your friend.

          1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

            Re: I can't find it...

            Yeah I noticed that afterwards. For some reason it never occurred to me to scroll *up* from a landing page!

  3. depicus

    IDE or Text Editor

    Not Visual Studio as an IDE more a glorified text editor, but if VS was to come to OS X count me in.

  4. Philip Skinner
    Thumb Up

    Works nicely

    I have to say that I think it works quite nicely. I shall be trying this out in the office tomorrow to see if it can replace my current editor (joe).

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nice, I do not know why but it seems like it will take a little getting use to using a version of VS on one of my non Wintel machines.

  6. Gerard Krupa

    Looks Familiar

    Soon all programmers' editors will look like Sublime.

    1. Geoffrey W

      Re: Looks Familiar

      Sublime was created 7 years ago. VS predates that and the VS code editor looked much as it does now.

      So...No, not really.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Gerard Krupa

        Re: Looks Familiar

        Your memory of Visual Studio 2008 and mine are very different. If I recall correctly, the minimal, flat UI was added in 2010, the dark theme in 2012 and the mini-map in 2013.

  7. W. Anderson

    Microsoft "proprietary" tools versus "Open" preferred tools

    It appears the bull dung from Microsoft in it's propaganda campaign to appear "platform agnostic" knows no end, and even dupes many developers who have little expert kowledge of Microsoft software development products and services as compared to, for example, th very popular and preferred Eclipse, Python or Ruby Free/Open Source Softare (FOSS) development languages, that do not integrate well with a Microsoft Visual Studio .Net environment except via using a kludge fit from Active State Komodo, commissioned by Microsoft. The similar state exists for QT5, and ISO C++, not Microsoft's non-compliant language suite.

    Since any of the above unemcumbered multi-platform tool sets cover development for Linux, UNIX, BSD UNIX-like, Android, iOS as well as Windows, who would any intelligent and experienced developer select tools meant to work only well on Windows?

    The company's efforts at universality ultimately show as little more than usual Smoke 'n Mirrors gimmicks.

    1. Notas Badoff
      Alien

      Re: Microsoft "proprietary" tools versus "Open" preferred tools

      Wow, pause for a breath dude. I hate Microsoft for its multiple betrayals of self and others, but you had me wiping the imagined spittle off the inside of my screen from your misplaced rant.

      "... work only well on Windows?" I've tried it only on Windows so far, but the only limitation I see is the usual limited editing operations I would expect from the Windows mindset. (No new editor can ever approach the range of features *required* unless it has gestated for a couple years with user feedback in watt-ton quantities. I'll be staying with Vim for awhile more.

      If nothing else this "hello from Seattle" is interesting for its DNA. An MS product based on JS/TS, running within the (formerly named Atom Shell) Electron shell from Github, which uses Node.js as the JS engine, and also uses the Chrome browser (Chromium) underneath for the HTML windows. Elvis is back and saying "merci, 非常感谢, ευχαριστώ πολύ" !

  8. harmjschoonhoven
    Big Brother

    Re: Terms of Use

    If you don't want to send your crash dumps to Microsoft, don't install this tool.

    So ... apparently Visual Studio Code can not be used while your machine is airgapped.

  9. This post has been deleted by its author

  10. thames

    Feature set?

    Any idea what this thing does that is significantly different from say Geany? The feature set in the documentation looks pretty run of the mill and I don't see anything worth the effort of downloading it and trying it out.

    I know that programmers can get really attached to whatever editor they've been using for a while, but I've switched editors many times and there's not a lot of difference between most of them these days, unless you are talking about something really hard core like Emacs.

    1. Wommit

      Re: Feature set?

      So far it looks like Geany is the better of the two.

  11. CaptSmeg

    site down

    hmm I wonder why, can't imagine a good reason.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A closed source dev product...

    On my Open Source OS?

    Sounds like a trojan horse to me.

    No ta.

  13. ricegf
    FAIL

    Beware the License Agreement!

    I have routinely dealt with legal reviews of license agreements for the past few decades, so I have developed a feel for where the problems lie. The license agreement included with the Visual Studio Code download for Linux is a disaster IMHO. Consider these terms:

    "You may make one backup copy of the software, for reinstalling the software."

    If you run nightly system backups, and keep a 30 day rotating image, you violate the agreement. And why in this day and age is a license agreement restricting the number of copies you may keep of a *freely downloadable application*???

    "The term of this agreement is until 30/04/2016 (day/month/year) or next public release of the software, whichever is first."

    The INSTANT a new version is released, whether you know about it or not, you must uninstall this release or you violate the agreement. Hope nothing in your applications depend on a feature removed in the next release, by the way.

    "Some features in the software may enable collection of data from users of applications you develop using the software."

    They not only collect data from you, as with (I suspect) most non-libre software, but also potentially from every user of every application you develop. 'I'll see your bet, Google, and raise you a generation of users.'

    "If you give feedback about the software to Microsoft, you give to ... third parties, without charge, any patent rights needed for their products, technologies and services to use or interface with any specific parts of a Microsoft software or service that includes the feedback."

    Nothing like a blanket gratis license of your patents to the entire world to raise a lawyer's eyebrow.

    "The software contains third party components licensed under open source licenses with source code availability obligations. Copies of those licenses are included in the ThirdPartyNotices file or accompanying credits file... You may obtain the complete corresponding source code from us if and as required under the relevant open source licenses by sending a money order or check for $5.00 to: Source Code Compliance, Team, Microsoft Corporation... We may also make the source available at http://thirdpartysource.microsoft.com/."

    ThirdPartyNotices.txt (wrong filename, but we'll let that pass) lists 81 packages. Source code is provided on the specified website for 3 of them. It's certainly *legal* to charge for the source of the other 78 packages, but how many companies actually require this in the Internet age?

    It's also weird that you can't pay $5 for a copy of Visual Studio Code as far as I know - just the source code they *didn't* write. Again, not illegal, just... unusual.

    I downloaded Code to try on my Ubuntu workstation, but after reading the license, I deleted it. I'll have to make do with one of the 146 other text editors and IDEs on my system. :-/

    1. petur
      FAIL

      Re: Beware the License Agreement!

      I'll just repeat the important part of the licence agreement for the downvoter:

      "Some features in the software may enable collection of data from users of applications you develop using the software."

      No thanks....

      1. silent_count

        Re: Beware the License Agreement!

        If they're up front about what data is collected and what triggers it, well and good, I suppose. You could code around it or choose a different tool chain.

        The nightmare would be developing a child oriented program, to teach them math for example, then finding out that your software collects data on it's users in contravention of laws specifically designed to protect children from such things.

        I've had a honest go at reading through their statements and T&Cs and am no wiser about what/how data might be collected about people who use software which you write using MS tools. Either they're being too vague or my ability to read 'legal' is not up to the task.

    2. Bogle
      FAIL

      Re: Beware the License Agreement!

      "Some features in the software may enable collection of data from users of applications you develop using the software."

      What features? That's nuts. Is the compiler inserting code into my apps? Shurely shome mistake ...

  14. craigm

    On Linux it just appears to be a test editor!

    Well I guess it is an achievement for MS to get software to run on Linux - so kudos for that. However it doesn't really seem to have any features. Even in C# the intellisense does nothing and there is no evidence of Build/Run/Debug options.

  15. phil dude
    Coat

    this is noise...

    it doesn't matter if it works or not, M$ knows that simply be engaging they can cause a bit of "noise" for those who *might* be thinking:

    "Y'know, I think I'll try that Ubuntu....".

    This is a trojan, and not in the fun way...

    P.

  16. asdf

    Yeah but no

    No source available, no install on my machines (doesn't say in article but come on its Microsoft). Also if source was released it would soon be available (after some porting) for *BSD, Solaris and other *nix as well.

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