JetBrains Announces Project Rider, A Cross-Platform IDE For C#

Visual Studio with ReSharper installed is hard to beat when it comes to .NET development, but that doesn’t mean competition isn’t welcome. If you’re a C# developer willing to experiment, JetBrains has announced its own cross-platform IDE, called Project Rider, that will include “a lot of functionality that you are already familiar with from ReSharper and IntelliJ-based IDEs”.

The words “ReSharper” and “cross-platform” are key here. While MonoDevelop and even Microsoft’s effort with Visual Studio Code offer non-Windows programmers a .NET IDE, they don’t really compare to VS.

Project Rider could be the answer such coders are looking for.

Even so, it seems like a massive step for the company. Here’s how JetBrains Matt Ellis tackles the question of “Why?”:

Well you kept asking us, so we finally got around to doing it!

Jokes aside though, our main reason is to provide choice. We believe that we can provide a great user experience for developers that might be interested in using alternative environments.

So why now? Because we believe it is the right time due to several factors:

• We’ve been working for several years in allowing ReSharper to work in different environments, independently of Visual Studio. An example of this is dotPeek.
• It’s quite clear that there’s an ever increasing tendency of developers using non-Windows platforms, and we’d like to give them the same experience they’ve come to know and love with ReSharper.
• Finally, Microsoft moving its platform and C# language towards Open Source, along with initiatives such as CoreCLR, have been an added incentive.

According to Ellis, ReSharper won’t be going away any time soon — if anything, it should get increased attention as all the work that goes into it is of direct benefit to Project Rider.

As for price? JetBrains hasn’t released any information yet, however, Ellis mentions “the licensing model will be inline with our other products from the JetBrains Toolbox”, which likely means it’ll be subscription-based.

Project Rider – A C# IDE [JetBrains]