Can you recomment a better IDE for Unity C# coding?

Question

The current version of Unity uses the old MonoDevelop 2.8 which is very primitive. Not only that it cannot register compile errors, I am also unable to know which method I can use. Each time I want to use some built-in method (like OnGUI or OnTriggerEnter) I have to search them manually.

Since I am coming from the world of IntelliJ IDEA or Eclipse or VisualStudio, this is a very primitive way of working.

I tried using the latest Unity with the newest MonoDevelop 4.0, but I did not succeed.

Can you suggest a modern IDE which I can use with Unity, the one where I will enjoy coding?

Answer 1

Updated 12/11/2018

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JetBrains Rider

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There's a new cross-platform .NET IDE by JetBrains - Rider with build-in resharper-like commands and quite a list of features including rich web development support and specifically Unity

Unity support

• Deeper integration with the Unity Editor: if a method/script is used in a scene, prefab, or asset file, navigating from the Find Usages tool window to this usage will highlight the usage right in the Unity Editor.
• Gutter mark icons for classes, methods, and fields that are implicitly used by Unity have been moved to Code Vision.
• Check that a compilation in Unity was successful before running unit tests through Unity Editor in Rider.

Comments: I've been using it for some time already and my impression is very positive. It's faster compared to Visual Studio and has some really awesome hotkey combos, not to mention support for AceJump and a ton of other useful extensions.

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Visual Studio C# Integration

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• What does this feature get me?

  A more sophisticated C# development environment. Think smart autocompletion, computer-assisted changes to source files, smart syntax highlighting and more.

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• What's the difference between Express and Pro?

  VisualStudio C# 2010 is a product from Microsoft. It comes in an Express and a Profesional edition. The Express edition is free, and you can download it from here: http://www.microsoft.com/express/vcsharp/ The Professional edition is not free, you can find out more information about it here: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/professional/default.mspx

  Unity's VisualStudio integration has two components:

  1) Unity creating and maintaining VisualStudio project files. Works with Express and with Profesional. 2) Unity automatically opening VisualStudio when you doubleclick on a script, or error in Unity. Works with Professional only.

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• I've got Visual Studio Express, how do I use it?

  1. In Unity, select from the menu Assets->Sync VisualStudio Project
  2. Find the newly created .sln file in your Unity project (one folder up from your Assets folder)
  3. Open that file with Visual Studio Express.
  4. You can now edit all your script files, and switch back to Unity to use them.

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• I've got Visual Studio Professional, how do I use it?

Note: With Microsoft's Acquisition of SyntaxTree, Visual Studio Tools for Unity (formerly known as UnityVS) has been released free of charge in the Visual Studio gallery.

This replaces the below steps for users of Visual Studio Professional and removes a number of caveats mentioned further below, allowing for debugging within VS, advanced project file integration, a mirrored console window withing VS, and more.

1. In Unity, go to Edit->Preferences, and make sure that Visual Studio is selected as your preferred external editor.
2. Doubleclick a C# file in your project. Visual Studio should automatically open that file for you.
3. You can edit the file, save, and switch back to Unity.

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A few things to watch out for:

• Even though Visual Studio comes with its own C# compiler, and you can use it to check if you have errors in your c# scripts, Unity still uses its own C# compiler to compile your scripts. Using the Visual Studio compiler is still quite useful, because it means you don't have to switch to Unity all the time to check if you have any errors or not.

• Visual Studio's C# compiler has some more features than Unity's C# compiler currently has. This means that some code (especially newer c# features) will not give an error in Visual Studio but will give an error in Unity.

• Unity automatically creates and maintains a Visual Studio .sln and .csproj file. Whenever somebody adds/renames/moves/deletes a file from within Unity, Unity regenerates the .sln and .csproj files. You can add files to your solution from Visual Studio as well. Unity will then import those new files, and the next time Unity creates the project files again, it will create them with this new file included.

• Unity does not regenerate the Visual Studio project files after an AssetServer update, or a SVN update. You can manually ask Unity to regenerate the Visual Studio project files trough the menu: Assets->Sync VisualStudio Project

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Source: http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/VisualStudioIntegration.html

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Updated:

Also, take a look at Script Inspector 3. It costs $55, but looks great. Thanks to @dudiedood for the link.