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Xamarin.Forms

Xamarin.Forms provides a way to quickly build native apps for iOS, Android, Windows and macOS, completely in C#.

Read more about the platform at https://www.xamarin.com/forms.

Build Status

Azure DevOps

Packages

Platform/FeaturePackage nameStablePrereleaseNightly Feed Azure (master branch)
CoreXamarin.FormsNuGetNuGet
AppLinksXamarin.Forms.AppLinksNuGetNuGet
MapsXamarin.Forms.MapsNuGetNuGet
Maps.GTKXamarin.Forms.Maps.GTKNuGetNuGet
Maps.WPFXamarin.Forms.Maps.WPFNuGetNuGet
PagesXamarin.Forms.PagesNuGetNuGet
Pages.AzureXamarin.Forms.Pages.AzureNuGetNuGet
Platform.GTKXamarin.Forms.Platform.GTKNuGetNuGet
Platform.WPFXamarin.Forms.Platform.WPFNuGetNuGet
Visual.MaterialXamarin.Forms.Visual.MaterialNuGetNuGet

If you want to use the latest dev build then you should read this blog post:

Getting Started

Windows

Install Visual Studio 2017+

VS 2017+ is required for developing Xamarin.Forms. If you do not already have it installed, you can download it here. VS 2017+ Community is completely free. If you are installing VS 2017+ for the first time, select the "Custom" installation type and select the following from the features list to install:

The Android 7.0 Nougat API 24 SDK is required for developing Xamarin.Forms. It can be installed by using the Xamarin Android SDK Manager.

We also recommend installing Xamarin Android Device Manager This will use the HAXM tools installed above and allow you to configure Android Virtual Devices (AVDs) that emulate Android devices. If you already have VS 2017+ installed, you can verify that these features are installed by modifying the VS 2017+ installation via the Visual Studio Installer.

Mac

Install Visual Studio for Mac 2019

If you do not already have it installed, instructions to download and setup can be found here.

Because of current Multi-Targeting limitations with Visual Studio for Mac you will need to manually build/restore some projects before you are able to work on the Xamarin Forms solution.

Here are a few different options we've put together to help make this process easier

./build.sh --target vsmac

If you are on Visual Studio for Mac 2017 you will need to turn off automatic package restore (Visual Studio => Preferences => Nuget => General => uncheck the Package Restore box) before working on the Xamarin.Forms solution. This step is no longer needed with Visual Studio for Mac 2019

Solution Configuration

Upon opening the Xamarin.Forms solution, you will find that there are a number of errors and warnings under the Error List pane; you can resolve this by changing the filter of Build + IntelliSense to Build Only. At this point, you should be able to successfully build the solution.

By default, the Xamarin.Forms.Controls project does not have a configuration for various API keys to access certain features on each platform (e.g. maps). When building the solution the first time, a controlgallery.config file will be generated inside that project, which looks like this:

UWPMapsAuthKey:

You will have to obtain your own API keys for each of these services, inserted directly after the identifier (e.g. UWPMapsAuthKey:abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz). You can find out how to obtain each of these as follows:

Due to the way that Android works, the maps API key cannot be injected at runtime. As a result, you will have to add this key to the MapsKey.cs file under Xamarin.Forms.ControlGallery.Android/Properties:

[assembly: Android.App.MetaData("com.google.android.maps.v2.API_KEY", Value = "INSERT_KEY_HERE")]

You can find out how to obtain a Google Maps API key here.

Build from the Command line

Make sure you have nuget.exe 4.0 or above and the latest dotnet core sdk (2.0.3). On macOS you should specify the platform in the msbuild command (/p:Platform=iPhoneSimulator)

msbuild /restore Xamarin.Forms.sln

UI Tests

Run UWP UI Tests

To run the UWP UI Tests:

  1. Install and run the Windows Application Driver.
  2. Launch the Xamarin.Forms.ControlGallery.WindowsUniversal project to install the ControlGallery application onto your system.

You should now be able to run any of the UWP UI Tests.

Coding Style

We follow the style used by the .NET Foundation, with a few exceptions:

Contributing

Reporting Bugs

We use GitHub Issues to track issues. If at all possible, please submit a reproduction of your bug along with your bug report.