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Introducing Rider, the New .NET IDE webinar: recording and Q&A
The recording of our recent webinar with Matt Ellis, Introducing Rider, the new .NET IDE from JetBrains, is now available:
In this webinar, Matt shows how to get up and running with Rider, and quickly get it working with your .NET Framework and .NET Core projects. He looks at the features that are familiar to ReSharper users, with code completion, inspections and quick fixes, testing and NuGet. He also shows what the IntelliJ platform brings to the party, including version control, debugging and database tools. And all of this on a Mac.
Questions and Answers
There were some popular questions asked during the webinar, as well as those that we didn’t get the chance to answer on the day.
Q: What can you say about the integration with Unity?
A: Basically Unity support is there: you can edit, run and debug Unity applications, attach to Unity process etc. There’s a featured Unity plugin that works with Rider and ReSharper, which contains Unity-specific generation and coding assistance features. There’s also a plugin that integrates Rider into the Unity editor. We’ll take a more in depth look at Unity support in a blog post that is coming soon.
Q: Will Rider have a coverage tool for Unity editor unit test tool?
A: It’s not decided yet whether we’ll add coverage tools in near future for Unity or for any other frameworks.
Q: Are you planning to add Xamarin Support?
A: Yes. You can already open and edit Xamarin solutions. You can’t run or debug them now but we’ll be working on that.
Q: Any plans to support visual design aspects for Xamarin solutions?
A: Yes, we’re investigating this as well. No time estimates so far but rest assured we’re looking at this.
Q: Are you also developing a GUI designer like in Visual Studio for WinForms, WPF etc?
A: Yes, we’re looking at how we can support at least previewing WinForms/WPF/Xamarin Forms. We’re not sure we’re going to make it for the first release though.
Q: Any news on licensing yet? Part of All Products licence?
A: Rider is definitely going to be a part of All Products subscription. Pricing is not defined but will most probably end up somewhere between ReSharper and IntelliJ IDEA price tags. More details to be decided and announced.
Q: Can you setup a custom font in Rider?
A: Absolutely: see File | Settings | Editor | Colors and fonts | Font. Support for fonts with ligatures is there as well. You can even install custom IDE themes although this is a bit more complicated.
Q: Will we be able to run a UWP project in Rider v1?
A: We probably won’t be able to support UWP in v1; in a longer run, we’ll certainly look at this.
Q: Any support for ReSharper Code Cleanup profiles to format code according to predefined layout? Is it possible to import from existing ReSharper settings?
A: Rider should actually read your per-solution ReSharper settings by default. UI for code style settings and Code Cleanup is coming.
Q: Are ReSharper plugins supported by Rider? Is there any place I read about requirements to make plugins compatible with Rider?
A: If a ReSharper plugin doesn’t contain any UI, Rider can reuse it. We’ll be working on documentation and SDK to make ReSharper plugins available in Rider. Right now, it’s pretty much a manual and undocumented process.
Q: Is there a way to sync my IDE settings between Windows and Mac?
A: Yes. Right now if you’re using ReSharper, save your settings to solution-wide layer with "Save to". This will create a .sln.dotSettings file, which Rider will respect on Windows and Mac. If you’re not using ReSharper and only using Rider, you’ll probably have to wait until we implement UI for settings management in Rider. We’re working on that.
Q: Will you support SonarLint?
A: In principle, you can even use IntelliJ’s SonarLint plugin with Rider as it’s marked as compatible (we have never tried it though, so unsure if there are issues). However you may not need a lot of that as Rider provides ReSharper’s 2000+ code inspections, including inspections for JavaScript, TypeScript etc.
Q: Does Rider support F# as well or is it a planned feature?
A: Rider doesn’t support F# at this point. We are considering adding F# support in future as it’s a top-voted feature request.
Q: Will other JetBrains .NET tools eventually be available with Rider? (dotTrace, dotCover, dotMemory, etc…)
A: We’re hoping to make them available in some form at some point in future but this is complicated because dotTrace and dotMemory both use a lot of Windows-specific UI. Not something we’re working on in the scope of v1. However, dotPeek’s decompiler engine is available in Rider as well as in ReSharper.
Q: How do I create a live template, such as a NUnit test snippet?
A: Live template editor isn’t implemented yet but will be available at a later time. Current workaround: create a template in Visual Studio + ReSharper, save it to solution-wide .dotSettings file, and Rider will pick it up.
Q: How far are we from v1 release?
A: We expect to release in 2017, probably in Q2.
Q: How will you track with changes happening in VS 2017? Will Rider updates be kept in sync with ReSharper updates?
A: Yes, we’re going to reuse changes introduced in ReSharper updates. Some of them (inspections, context actions) come to Rider "for free"; others require additional effort. As to Visual Studio 2017, if Microsoft introduces something that we don’t have, we’ll consider how and whether to implement anything similar.
Q: Are structural navigation and "smart cursor movement" (when you press dot inside parenthesis, focus is moved outside of expression) in your plans? Really hard to switch to Rider from Visual Studio + ReSharper without that feature :(
A: Structural navigation and typing assists that you’re referring to both require additional efforts to port to Rider, so these will be available later.
Q: Will there be diagrams as in IntelliJ IDEA or layer diagrams?
A: This is not planned in the scope of v1.
Q: Is it possible to share naming conventions between team members (share on a network drive, URL, …)?
A: It will be possible. Right now, if you’re using ReSharper in Visual Studio, save a team-shared solution settings file, and Rider will use it.
Q: Can Rider navigate to .NET source code (instead of decompilation)? Does Rider uses public symbols?
A: Yes it can. It doesn’t decompile library code if it can pull source from Microsoft Reference Source Center: same as ReSharper and dotPeek.
Q: Will Rider eventually substitute all your add-ons for VS?
A: No. Rider will reuse new features introduced in ReSharper but Rider and ReSharper will co-exist: if you’re fine with Visual Studio, you’ll have ReSharper available; if you’re eager to switch IDEs, there’s Rider for you.
Q: Is Rider compatible with Visual Studio 2008 projects and solutions?
A: Yes, you should be available to load, edit, run and debug these projects on Windows.
Q: Some more information on debugger? Same as within Visual Studio?
A: A different implementation. We’re targeting feature parity with Visual Studio by the time of v1. Just My Code and Edit and Continue are currently two missing pieces. (GPU and native debugging are out of scope though.)
Q: Will there be an integration for ClearCase?
A: There are ClearCase plugins available for the IntelliJ platform, but they’re not currently marked (or tested) as compatible with Rider. If there’s demand, we’ll try to make them compatible.
Q: What framework is Rider written in?
A: Rider is written in a custom framework that implements a fast and efficient protocol to be able to transfer data between the backend (ReSharper) and the frontend (IntelliJ IDEA), and guarantees data consistency.
Q: How soon will Rider support .NET Core 1.1 and MSBuild based .csproj files?
A: We hope to provide support for these technologies in upcoming EAP builds, most probably before end of this year.
Q: Does Rider support running on both .NET framework AND Mono on Windows? Or is Windows .NET Framework only?
A: Mono on Windows should work as well.
Q: Does Rider support any obfuscation solutions?
A: We haven’t looked in this direction yet.
Q: What is the expected timeline for having multiple projects open simultaneously?
A: Definitely before v1. Hopefully before end of this year. This feature has a very high priority.
Q: Any plans on supporting the JavaScript tools (e.g. Angular) available in the IntelliJ platform?
A: Yes. We’ll be integrating a lot of WebStorm features into Rider soon, including Angular support.
Q: Will there be Community and Ultimate editions similar to IntelliJ IDEA, or a single edition like WebStorm and RubyMine?
A: We’re targeting one edition.
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