SharpDevelop (also styled as #develop) is a discontinued free and open source integrated development environment (IDE) for the .NET Framework, Mono, Gtk# and Glade# platforms. It supports development in C#, Visual Basic .NET, Boo, F#, IronPython and IronRuby programming languages.
SharpDevelop was designed as a free and 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) the ability to compile and debug form/console .NET Framework applications, a "New Project" wizard, toolbars, menus, panels and a docking system, and built-in code refactoring tools, and it has an integrated debugger that allows for stepping, viewing values of objects in memory, and breakpoints.
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#, VB.NET, Boo, and the IronPython and IronRuby languages, using the following GUI technologies:
Windows Forms
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
Entity Framework
SharpDevelop was written entirely in C# and consists of about 20 components that integrate to form the application. The source-code editor component, known as AvalonEdit, 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
On 11 September 2000 Mike Kruger launched the project, while testing the first public release of .