JetBrains has published its 2025 plans for Rider, its cross-platform .NET IDE, including mixed mode debugging for .NET and C++ code, remote development on Windows, and improved SQL Server support.

Rider, which since October 2024 has been free for non-commercial use, is a cross-platform .NET IDE for Windows, macOS and Linux, that also supports C/C++, JavaScript, Python and more.

According to the new roadmap, Rider 2025.1, likely to be available in April, will include mixed mode debugging, where both .NET and C or C++ code can be debugged in the same session. The target is both game developers and those working with desktop applications that call native code APIs or libraries. The support will include stepping between .NET and native code, and inspecting variables in both environments. This feature is already available in Microsoft’s Windows-only Visual Studio but not in the cross-platform VS Code.

Alongside this, JetBrains promises improved C++ debugging, with better performance and new stepping filters – this is planned for 2025 but not necessarily the April release.

Remote development is another key focus, and in Rider 2025.1 JetBrains plans to support Windows as a remote host, alongside the existing macOS and Linux support. 

SQL Server support will be improved by integrating Microsoft’s SQL Tools API, which is also used by Microsoft’s open-source Azure Data Studio and VS Code. SQL Server runs on Linux as well as on Windows, increasing demand for cross-platform tools, and JetBrains is now building on Microsoft’s investment in this area.

Another planned new feature is better tools for Roslyn, the .NET compiler platform. Roslyn-based suppressors will allow fine-tuning of compiler diagnostics, and a Roslyn syntax visualizer will show how Roslyn sees a project’s code structure. The goal is to make it easier to develop custom analyzers and refactorings, as well as improved understanding of runtime behavior.

Interest in Rider may have increased since Microsoft abandoned Visual Studio for the Mac in August 2023. Microsoft now points non-Windows .NET developers at VS Code with the C# Dev Kit add-on, but unlike Rider this is not a dedicated .NET IDE, and has a poor reputation [https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-dotnettools.csdevkit&ssr=false#review-details] as well as requiring a license for commercial use.