With ASP.NET Core, you can now develop on, and deploy your applications to, Mac OS X and Linux, in addition to Windows. If you worked with Active Server Pages (ASP) a long time ago, you may remember Chili!Soft ASP, a third-party solution web server plugin that allowed ASP to run on Solaris, Linux, and other Unix platforms. The new .NET Core is much more than that.
With a cross-platform runtime that can be deployed along with your web application, .NET Core provides official support from Microsoft to enjoy the benefits of ASP.NET on your favourite platform. With the aforementioned Visual Studio Code, you can also easily build ASP.NET Core applications on those platforms.
Although this book will primarily cover ASP.NET Core development on Windows, the following instructions will help you get your environment set up on OS X and Linux as well.
Setting up your development environment for ASP.NET Core on Windows is pretty straightforward. If you have Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 with the latest Web Developer tools installed, you already have what you need. The new ASP.NET Core templates are enough to get you started.
If you prefer, you can also use Visual Studio Code on Windows if you just need a basic code editor on one or more development machines. Be aware that the Community Edition is only for non-enterprise customers, so you cannot install it alongside the new Professional or Enterprise Editions.
To set up your development environment on Mac OS X, you can start by installing the latest version of Visual Studio Code. You can also install ASP.NET Core from a command line. Here is a high-level three-step process to get you started:
Install Open SSL.
Install .NET Core SDK.
Install Visual Studio Code for OS X.
For up-to-date detailed instructions (and command-line instructions) for setting up ASP.NET Core on Mac OS X, you may refer to Microsoft's official guide at https://www.microsoft.com/net/core#macos .
Setting up your development environment on Linux is a little more complicated. As you may expect, you can get started by installing Visual Studio Code on your Linux machine.
To summarize the steps to set up the runtime, you will have to do the following:
Install prerequisites, which may vary for your version of Linux.
Install .NET Core SDK.
Install Visual Studio Code for Linux.
For up-to-date detailed instructions on setting up ASP.NET Core on Linux, you may refer to Microsoft's official guide at the following URL. Select a Linux distribution to see more details about that particular distro, such as Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian, and many others, at https://www.microsoft.com/net/core .