SharpDevelop was designed as a free, lightweight alternative to
Microsoft Visual Studio, and contains an equivalent feature for almost every essential Visual Studio Express feature and features very similar to those found in
Borland Kylix and
Delphi, including advanced project management, code editing, application compiling and debugging functionality. More specifically, the IDE includes a
GUI designer, code/design views,
syntax highlighting,
auto completion menus (similar to
IntelliSense and built-in
code refactoring tools, and it has an integrated
debugger To allow for easy project migration, SharpDevelop works natively with Visual Studio project and code files. It is able to compile applications for .NET Framework version 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5.1 and the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 and 3.5. SharpDevelop's
Graphic User Interface Designers work with the C#, •
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) •
Entity Framework SharpDevelop was written entirely in C# can be used by other applications. It also includes functionality for: • External
COM and
ActiveX components •
Code analysis (
FxCop) •
Unit testing (
NUnit) •
Code coverage (PartCover) • Profiler •
Subversion (TortoiseSVN) •
Git •
Mercurial •
StyleCop add-in • Documentation generation (
Sandcastle, SHFB) • Plugins == History ==