Novell has launched an add-on module for Microsoft’s Visual Studio development environment to facilitate the creation of .Net and C# applications for Linux, Unix and Mac OS X.

Mono Tools for Visual Studio was built by some of the engineers working on the Mono open-source project, which is sponsored by the vendor. The aim of Mono is to build a cross-platform implementation of C# and the Common Language Runtime for .Net that is binary-compatible with Microsoft’s version of .Net.

“Customers have been asking us for an easier, more simple and streamlined process to port their .Net applications to Linux, Unix and Mac," said Miguel de Icaza, Mono project founder and Novell’s vice president of developer platforms.

"By integrating our tools right into Visual Studio, we are enabling developers familiar with Windows and .Net to quickly bring their applications to the Linux market, and ISVs to offer their software as ready-to-run applications.”

The offering enables programmers to develop, analyse, test, debug, deploy or port their .Net applications to non-Microsoft platforms without leaving the Visual Studio development environment.

The ability to run and debug applications in Mono within Visual Studio enables them to isolate incompatibilities between Mono and .Net and between Linux and Windows, making cross-platform development more straightforward.

Mono for Visual Studio is also integrated with Novell’s Suse Linux Studio Online hosted software. Studio Online enables developers to built and test appliances running on openSuse or the Suse Linux Enterprise Server. But Novell’ s new offering likewise automatically packages up application code to run on the two operating systems for immediate deployment.

The tool is available now in three versions, which all include a one-year subscription for product updates. The Professional Edition is aimed at individual developers, and the Enterprise Edition at one corporate developer in an organisation. The Ultimate Edition provides users with five enterprise developer licences and a limited commercial licence to redistribute Mono on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.