Table of Contents

Setting up your development environment for Rider

A step-by-step guide for setting up your development IDE for Rider

This is a guide on setting up your development environment for creating games with MonoGame using JetBrains Rider. By following this guide, you will learn how to install and configure Rider with the recommended extension for MonoGame development.

Installing Rider

Note

Rider is free for non-commercial use, you do have to register and create an account, but otherwise all features will be unlocked.

Toolbox App

The JetBrains Toolbox App is the recommended tool to install JetBrains products. It allows instant rollbacks, having multiple Rider instances, auto-updating to the latest version, and unifies the setup experience across OSes.

Install Rider using JetBrains Toolbox

JetBrains Toolbox screenshot

Standalone installation

In case you prefer manual installation, please follow the corresponding guide that is relevant to your operating system:

Configuring MonoGame development environment

It is recommended to use the MonoGame plugin for JetBrains Rider when working under your project in Rider to unlock the most available IDE features. The plugin is free, open-source, and distributed under the MIT license. However, this step is still optional.

To explore all available features of the MonoGame plugin for Rider, you can refer to the rider-monogame/README.md.

Installing MonoGame plugin

  1. Click on the "Plugins" menu item on the Welcome screen:

    Rider plugins menu item

  2. Under the "Marketplace" tab, search for the "MonoGame" in the search bar

  3. Click on the "Install" button next to the MonoGame plugin:

    Rider install MonoGame plugin

  4. Don't forget to restart Rider after installation, when prompted:

    Confirm restarting Rider

Installing project templates

  1. Click on the "New Solution" button

  2. On the left sidebar of the New Project Wizard, find the MonoGame section:

    MonoGame section in the New Project Wizard

  3. Click "Install MonoGame Templates".

Warning

As of Rider 2025.3, due to a known bug, the MonoGame.Templates.CSharp package that Rider installs globally will not be automatically visible to the dotnet new from the terminal. You need to install them manually too.

Creating a new MonoGame project

  1. Click on the "New Solution" button

  2. On the left sidebar of the New Project Wizard, select the MonoGame section

  3. Fill the "Solution name" and "Solution directory"

  4. Choose the project type:

    Selection of the project type in the New Project Wizard

  5. Click "Create"

  6. You can now press F5 to compile and debug your game!

Note

In case you want to use the different versions of the project templates, including preview packages, you can select another available package version under the "Available packages" field:

Selection of the templates package version in the New Project Wizard

Keeping your environment up to date

A couple of advice to keep your development setup up to date:

  1. Always use the latest stable version of Rider. Configure the update policy for the Rider installed via installer or for the Rider installed via the Toolbox App.

  2. It is recommended to enable the plugins auto-update feature.

This way both Rider and installed plugins will always be up to date with the newest fixes and features available.

Troubleshooting

Note

In case you need any further assistance or problem troubleshooting, please drop a message into the #help-rider channel on the MonoGame Discord server.

ContentBuilder doesn't detect changes in content files in subsequent runs

ReSharper Solution Builder tries to proactively optimize MSBuild targets building, which means some targets that doesn't support incremental compilation would essentially be ignored. About ReSharper build feature: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/rider/Build_Process.html

There is an option under Settings > Build, Execution, Deployment > Toolset and Build > Build section called "Invoke BeforeBuild and AfterBuild targets for skipped projects" to force Rider to call targets that depend on BeforeBuild and AfterBuild, which solves this problem:

Fix the Use ReSharper Build behaviour

Enable it and click "Save".

If even after that change a Content Builder project doesn't get executed, you can completely disable ReSharper build under the same section:

Uncheck the Use ReSharper Build checkbox

Don't forget to save changes.

Issues with compiling MGFX effects under Linux

You might need to add the MGFXC_WINE_PATH environment variable to /etc/environment for it to be picked up. See 5777151094034-Rider-cannot-see-all-Environmental-Variables for details.

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