MacinCloud for Xamarin

Resistance is well… you know… futile.

I used a Mac Mini for my Xamarin builds. It was slow and eventually crashed hard. I had to reinstall the OS, and upgrade, and upgrade, and upgrade, and upgrade. Did I mention how slow it was?

While I was waiting for the pictured reinstall and many other upgrades, I read about MacinCloud. It sounded promising but I hate adding to the monthly burn. I resisted and upgraded and upgraded and built slowly and crashed again and finally decided I’d try MacinCloud’s trial.

The Signup

The signup is quick, easy, and painless with the exception of one thing: I chose the wrong subscription for simply remote building using Xamarin. So here’s my key point: if you want to just build from Visual Studio using Xamarin on Windows, you need the Managed Server ($20/mo) but you also need the “SSH add-on” ($2.50/mo) so make sure you check that box. It is my understanding that, under this plan, you’ll be sharing the Mac with others (they’ll have their own log in of course so it shouldn’t be a problem). This plan includes the latest OS with Xcode and Visual Studio installed.

The Signin

You must be signed into the Mac in order to use the remote building capability of Xamarin. You can use Remote Desktop Connection (RDP) to connect to your Mac. They’ll send you an e-mail with a .ZIP containing some .RDP files to simply connect or you can just type in the info they send you in the e-mail. You can configure RDP to remember this info so it’s always just one click away.

The connection

Once you’re signed in, from your Visual Studio on the PC, choose Connect from the Xamarin toolbar and enter the fully qualified host name or IP address of your Mac. You’ll also have to enter that user name and password again from the e-mail. Once you’ve done this, though, you can just choose the connection again and don’t have to retype all that info next time.

Now you can build and debug using the iPhone simulator or Xamarin’s Live Player which is very cool but might warrant a separate post in its current state (beta).

Usage—Sign Out

One last thing about signing in. You need to Sign Out when you’re done building for the day and/or before you take a dinner break. You need to actually Sign Out. Don’t just close the RDP window. That may leave you signed in. The Managed Server plan has a daily time limit of 3 hours.

Exceeding Your Plan’s Usage

According to MacinCloud support:

“We have an algorithm to track user usage pattern, once the user's usage exceeds 3 hours every day, they are automatically upgraded to the tier that better reflecting their usage pattern. If user use more than 3 hours but less than 5 hours daily, they will be in the 5-Hour daily limit tier.”

To me, this seems like a very reasonable way to do things.