OSX compiler for Maya plugins

Coding
#1

I finished Chad Vernon’s course on the Maya API this summer: https://www.cgcircuit.com/course/introduction-to-the-maya-api

I’ve used Visual Studio as my IDE of choice and haven’t had any problems going through the course material and compile all plugins just fine.
I am curious though: Can I build Maya plugins for OSX in Visual Studio or do I need to setup some other compiler? It would suck to get a Mac and have to use XCode for that because I don’t really own any Apple products (I do have a mac laptop at work though that I guess I could use).

#2

This is complete speculation, but my guess is that yes, you’d need to use xcode, or at least the same general compiler toolchain that maya uses on the mac.

#3

Newer versions of Visual Studio (Windows) have some level of support for cross-compiling to Mac, but it requires a networked Macintosh. I think all that is happening is VS is controlling XCode somehow. It’s all in support of the Xamarin cross-platform mobile stuff, but may be able to be repurposed( pure speculation).

There’s also Visual Studio for Mac (https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/mac/) which is probably better than XCode.