To read this article in its entirety, please visit eWeek: Novell Delivers Mono Tools for Visual Studio 2.0

Novell has delivered Mono Tools for Visual Studio 2.0, a new version of the open-source tool for developers to use Visual Studio to design, code and maintain multiplatform applications.

Mono Tools for Visual Studio 2.0 is an add-in module for the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) that facilitates the development of .NET applications for Linux, Unix and Mac OS X. Mono Tools helps reduce the time and costs of multiplatform development, and enables corporate developers, independent software vendors (ISVs) and development services providers to quickly expand market opportunities and deployment options. It also enables .NET developers to leverage their existing skill sets and an extensive .NET ecosystem of code, libraries and tools to develop or port applications to Linux, Unix or Mac OS X, Novell said in a press release about the technology.

The primary new feature in Mono Tools 2.0 is support for Mac OS X, said Joseph Hill, Mono product manager at Novell. Thus, all of the features Mono Tools has provided for development, deployment and debugging of applications running on Linux are now fully available to developers targeting Mac OS X from directly within the IDE.

"The Mono Tools 1.0 was a Linux-focused release, and SUSE Linux in particular," Hill said. "However, with 2.0 we wanted to give Mono developers the things they wanted, and Mac support was a big request. So we now support development and debugging on the Mac."