I've developed a WinForms application with C# in Visual Studio on Windows and I need a version for macOS but I don't know which way is the best.
I also have a Mac machine so don't have problems about the compiler: I already used VS2017 with integrated Xamarin to develop an iOS app using my mac as the required build server but didn't find any such method for developing a Mac desktop application. NET core only works with console application and even Visual Studio for Mac is different from Visual Studio for Windows and doesn't provide any visual designer. Am I forced to redo the whole application using an Apple product?
There are multiple solutions to building desktop apps targeting a Mac using .NET.
Mono is an alternative implementation of the .NET Framework that reimplements the underlying Windows API calls that Win Forms makes. It's probably the most straightfoward way to port an existing Win Forms app to Mac.
ElectronNET is a combination of Electron and .NET. Electron provides a desktop development framework combining a Chromium rendering engine with NodeJS. It's best if you have a lot of familiarity with web development. It's notable that major companies that want to build cross platform apps are using Electron (Visual Studio Code, Slack, Atom etc) so those with the time to invest in researching how to do a cross platform app seem to choose this option.
Avalonia is a .NET desktop framework that is inspired by WPF, but it's cross platform.
So no, you aren't forced to redo your application. Hopefully you've done a good job of separating UI logic from business logic, which will make using one of these other technologies easier.
Note that even though .NET Core 3 (which is cross platform) has support for Win Forms and WPF, that functionality will only be working on Windows. Win Forms still depends on the underlying Windows APIs, and WPF still depends on DirectX.
Is it possible to develop and build Linux applications with Xamarin with the same code base?
After a few years with Ubuntu, my main OS right now is Windows again. But it's not impossible that I could switch to Mac.
Right now I have a bit of experience with Qt and no experience with Xamarin.
With Qt you can develop on Windows, Linux, and Mac and for Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, ... They are pretty clear about that.
Since Xamarin is free and open source now and I still don't have much experience in Qt, I'm considering trying out Xamarin for cross platform development instead of Qt.
Not being able to release my software for Linux would be a deal breaker for me. Being able to develop on Linux would be nice, but is optional.
But after all my Google research, I could only find information and people asking for support to develop on Linux and not for Linux.
As far as I know, this shouldn't be a problem with Mono alone. But as far as I know Xamarin > Mono and I don't get everything in Mono I could get in Xamarin.
I'm also not sure how well-supported Mono will be in the future. For me it looks like Xamarin is much more important for Microsoft than Mono itself.
I'm not sure if it's even possible, since Xamarin is based on Mono, but is it possible that Microsoft will at some point decide not to support Mono with .NET compatibility in the same way as Xamarin, or even cancel Mono as standalone completely?
So I'm looking for one single framework for all desktop and mobile platforms I can rely on, and I want to know if Xamarin and/or Mono and and/or Xamarin + Mono could be an alternative to Qt before I go deeper into any of those solutions.
Just in case someone else comes accross this q/a: the situation has changed. With Xamarin.Forms 3.0, Gtk# is supported (as preview, at this moment). Therefore, full Linux GUI support is enabled.
So, Xamarin now covers:
Android
iOS
UWP apps
WPF apps
Linux Gtk desktop applications
Mac OS
Watch OS
tv OS
Tizen
The only thing left to wish for: JS/HTML5 Web App target platform, as part of Xamarin :)
No, Xamarin is not available for Linux. This was a conscious decision made by the Xamarin team several years ago:
Miguel de Icaza 2011-08-04 11:52:37 UTC
We face a QA problem here.
The problem with supporting Linux is that we would need to create a
self-contained Mono packaging for all of the bits we ship since most
Linux distributions are slightly off when it comes to Mono.
It also means that if we advertise "Linux" we would need to QA a dozen
different combination due to different Linux distributions and
different editions of each distribution.
Perhaps we would support just a single distribution and a single
version, which is closer to what we have to do on Windows/Mac today.
To clarify, the Xamarin product range is not available on Linux (Xamarin Studio, Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android) but MonoDevelop, the foundation of Xamarin Studio, and Mono, the cross-platform .NET runtime, definitely is.
You can build desktop software using MonoDevelop. The MonoDevelop site has plenty of instructions on getting started:
Install MonoDevelop on Linux
Seems that there is a chance of Xamarin Forms work on linux distros. In this reddit thread Miguel de Icaza says:
Some of our team members actually develop in Linux. The reason why we
never released the Linux tools is because we were charging a lot of
money and people would rightfully expect the software to be fully
supported. We had enough keeping our Mac and Windows users happy, and
adding an unknown number of Linux distributions sounded like a hard
task. Now that we are open sourcing the SDKs and I no longer will feel
bad if something does not work under a particular Linux configuration,
I will be happy to release the Linux builds.
That is: the fact that Forms is an open source tool currently opens this possibility.
Yes, as of mid-2018, it is possible to develop cross platform GUI applications that target windows/mac/linux/android/ios using the "Xamarin.Forms" library. Basically, you have one shared library project from cross platform code (UI and other cross platform stuff), and one project per platform for platform-specific code (Xamarin.Forms have one backend implementation for each platform. On Linux, this is using GTK).
However, with MonoDevelop you can only develop/build the cross-platform project and the linux-specific project of the application. You will still need to use Visual Studio or Rider to develop/build for the other platforms.
See the following answer:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/53317021/298005
https://github.com/0xFireball/xamarin-android-linux
As matthewrdev said, Xamarin.Studio, Xamarin.iOS, and Xamarin.Android aren't "officially" supported; however, Xamarin.iOS uses virtual emulator anyway (and I don't think there will be a workaround for Xamarin.iOS to run on Linux), but for Xamarin Studio (MonoDevelop on Linux, or Jetbrain's Riders (how to run it on linux with no official support is also provided in the link) Can run on Linux as an alt for Xamarin.Studio, and that link I shared explains how to install Xamarin.Android on linux, so just for Xamarin.iOS you will need to migrate or dual boot or sth, I hope that helps! (I stopped using Xamarin my-self, however, this environment helps developing for Xamarin on linux!)
GTK is listed as one of supported platforms/backends for Xamarin.Forms which allows building apps for Linux (as well as macOS and Windows via same GTK project). Though it doesn't look like there was much of development since 2018/2019 and Xamarin.Forms 3.0. Tried running 2 apps with basic UI and compared GTK backedn on Windows/macOS (comparing to WPF and Xamarin.mac back-ends ) and found GTK not worth pursuing (basic scenarios failing).
You can track GTK progress at https://github.com/jsuarezruiz/forms-gtk-progress/blob/master/Status.md
On Ubuntu 20.04, you can run your ASP.Net MVC 5 application using XSP4. Open a console to where you installed your MVC applications, where all folders, Global.asax, Web.config, ... are and run "xsp4 --port 80" or any other port you like and available. XSP4 is an independent web server and does not need Apache to be run.
Also, for C# developers, even the MonoDevelop is not in Ubuntu 20.04, which I don't know why, you can still install it and debug your ASP.Net MVC application. You can also debug any WinForm and console application using the MonoDevelop. YOu can run all your application using mono too.
I have VS 2015 Community Edition and installed Xamarin to create Android applications, I installed Android SDK and emulators and setup them, I have 2 questions:
Do I have to start a device in emulator first and then debug the android application in VS 2015?
For form and controls to add to android application have to use the Xamarin forms or where can I find any 3rd party controls, I have SyncFusion community package are there any controls for Xamarin?
Thank you
1.) No. You don't need to start the emulator first. If there is not emulator running, VS will start the current selected Emulator.
2.) Xamarin.Forms and Android/iOS/WinPhone projects are different approaches.
When you make a Xamarin.Forms app, then you create one UI and customize it for every platform (e.g. padding to the top edge). So you share the UI AND yor cross plattform code (e.g. custom datat service like fetching feeds/database entries/...).
An Crossplattform App (New Project -> Visual C# -> Crossplatform -> Blank App (Native Portable)) is meant to create a project for each platform and create your UI for each target. Additionally (like the Xamarin.Forms) you can share your buisness code across them as a PCL (portable class libary). So if you have to request some data from a webservice then you can implement them in the PCL and access it from your Android, WinPhone and iOS app.
In Xamarin.Forms you can design your own custom controls by just inheriting from a existing control and making a renderer for each platform by yourselfe or try the Xamarin Component Store.
In the cross platform approach you can/have to design them on each platform by yourselfe.
In Xamarin.Forms you have
One UI for multiple platforms
Portion of Code you can shar increases
The UI looks absolutly native
BUT:
You can only use the least common denominator (things that are possible unter Android can't be used under Android since iOS and WinPhone don't support them
sometimes the UI does not work as it is intended
When you create your app with the Crossplatform approach:
You have the full control about the things and how they work in each device
BUT:
You have to have knowledge about the application life time and how the OS really works.
Take a look at the developer page of xamarin: Xamarin.Forms
Xamarin.Forms is best for:
- Data entry apps
- Prototypes and proofs-of-concept
- Apps that require little platform-specific functionality
- Apps where code sharing is more important than custom UI
Xamarin.iOS & Xamarin.Android are best for:
- Apps that require specialized interactions
- Apps with highly polished design
- Apps that use many platform-specific APIs
- Apps where custom UI is more important than code sharing
Beginner question here, I'm learning to code and have been working with C# for a few weeks.
Now I am trying out with Windows.Forms and so far I haven't been sure on what kind of solution I am suppose to load. I am using a Mac and Tamarin Studio. Xamarin only offers Xamarin.Forms but I'm not sure about that.
Any helping hands out there ?
Xamarin Studio is only for cross platform app development. Meaning you can code in C# your Android and iOS app. At most, you can develop a Console project but that's about it.
Xamarin.Forms is not to be confused with Windows Forms (WinForms).
Xamarins.Forms Xamarin.Forms is a cross-platform UI toolkit that allows developers to easily create native user interface layouts that can be shared across Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. (Source)
WindowsForms Windows Forms (WinForms) is a graphical (GUI) class library included as a part of Microsoft .NET Framework, providing a platform to write rich client applications for desktop, laptop, and tablet PCs. (Source)
So to answer your question, if you want to build a Windows App using Windows Forms (though I would recommend using WPF as it's more modern), you will need to do that on Windows using either Visual Studio or another compatible IDE.
I have an app developed using Xamarin.iOS that i would like to port to Windows 10. I have read that is possible to use Windows Bridge to port app developed using Objective-C (WinObjC provides support for iOS API) to Windows 10 using WinObj project.
It's possible to do the same with a project written in C# using Xamarin.iOS?
If you're working with Xamarin.iOS you need to forget WinObjC. WinObjC is a bridge to write native windows apps using Objective-C. Since you're using C# you can write the interface using XAML and share your business logic between the apps easily.
The WinObjC project is a bridge of Cocoa Touch, not a port, and it's real Objective-C. You would have to convert your C# code to Objective-C by hand, yes. Eventually you'll be able to use (mostly) the same source code on iOS and Windows!
Using the Windows Bridge for iOS to bring your Xamarin.iOS App to Windows is not working. This only works with Full Objective-C Projects. Anyways you will be able to build your Windows App on top of Xamarin.iOS very fast when you have encapsulated it correctly. Then you just need to rebuild the UI and maybe implement some interfaces :)
WinObjC is the Windows Bridge for iOS (previously known as ‘Project Islandwood’).
Windows Bridge for iOS (also referred to as WinObjC) is a Microsoft open source project that provides an Objective-C development environment for Visual Studio/Windows.
In addition, WinObjC provides support for iOS API compatibility.
The bridge is available to the open-source community now in its current state.
The iOS bridge as an open-source project under the MIT license. Given the ambition of the project, making it easy for iOS developers to build and run apps on Windows. Salmaan Ahmed has an in-depth post on the Windows Bridge for iOS http://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2015/08/06/windows-bridge-for-ios-lets-open-this-up/ discussing the compiler, runtime, IDE integration, and what the bridge is and isn’t. Best of all, the source code for the iOS bridge is live on GitHub right now.
The iOS bridge supports both Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 apps built for x86 and x64 processor architectures, and soon we will add compiler optimizations and support for ARM, which adds mobile support.