CODEWITHSUNDEEP
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greenTree
greenTree

Reputation: 305

Does Visual Studio need to be installed on the Xamarin build machine Mac?

We are using Visual Studio (15.9.11) with Xamarin on our PC's.

We have XCode 10.1 installed on the build machine.

We are running out of disk space on our build machine MacBook Pro 128GB, and I've noticed that Visual Studio is installed. Is it actually required?

Top tip: Don't buy anything less than 256GB for building apps in Xamarin and building on a Mac... It's an absolute nightmare.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 582

Answers (3)

Shanu Singh
Shanu Singh

Reputation: 395

I am using Visual Studio 2019 and Earlier I was using Visual Studio 2017, My mac has the same disk space and there is no need to install Visual Studio on the mac because Windows VS will Automatically Download Xamarin.SDK file at the time of building the connection between the mac and the VS but you must have to install Xcode in order to build the app.

Upvotes: 0

SushiHangover
SushiHangover

Reputation: 74174

If you are using Visual Studio 2019 15.6+ for Windows you can use "Automatic Mac provisioning" and not install Visual Studio for Mac (the current installation/requirement documentation does not reflect VS15.6+ based setups).

Only Xamarin.iOS and Mono (including the related MSBuild tools) will be installed and thus you can have headless remote build only MacOS machines after the initial macOS setup, install of Xcode and remote login configuration.

Automatic Mac provisioning

Starting with Visual Studio 2019 version 15.6, Pair to Mac automatically provisions a Mac with software necessary for building Xamarin.iOS applications: Mono, Xamarin.iOS (the software framework, not the Visual Studio for Mac IDE), and various Xcode-related tools (but not Xcode itself).

Before following the instructions in this guide, complete the following steps:

  • On a Windows machine, install Visual Studio 2019

  • On a Mac, install Xcode and Visual Studio for Mac (Note: read the highlighted note below)

  • You must manually open Xcode after installing so that it can add any additional components.

If you would prefer not to install Visual Studio for Mac, Visual Studio 2019 can automatically configure the Mac build host with Xamarin.iOS and Mono. You must still install and run Xcode. For more information, see Automatic Mac provisioning.

Upvotes: 1

Jason
Jason

Reputation: 89129

Yes. The required build tools are part of the VS Mac install.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/ios/get-started/installation/windows/introduction-to-xamarin-ios-for-visual-studio#requirements-and-installation

Upvotes: 0

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