Xamarin.Forms project with all 4 platforms - android

I am willing to have one single solution for all platform project.
For now, if I use Visual Studio 2019 Windows, then I can have iOS, Android and UWP
And if, I use Visual Studio for MAC, then I can have iOS, Android and MacOS
I am willing to have one common project and share source code via GitHub Repository (obviously private) and then add all 4 platforms into it.
I already had a running project on VS 2019 Windows, and when I shared the Source code using GitHub to VS MAC, after adding MacOS its not working.
I know I am suppose to ask questions related to coding, and I assume this is indirectly related to that only.
Can anyone guide me, how to do that properly. I am using Syncfusion Xamarin.Forms controls as well.

Related

Where is Windows Phone Simulator for Xamarin Forms?

I have created a Xamarin forms multi-platform project. Using Xamarin Studio Community 6.3.
The project contains three folder. Project and Project.iOS and Project.Droid.
I have implemented most of code inside the Project folder which is supposed to be shared across all platforms.
When I choose to Run the project there are only options for project.iOS and project.Droid, what about running on Windows phone? I can't seem to find that option either on Xamarin Studio or Visual Studio Community 2017.
Also when I look into some of the samples downloaded from Xamarin websites. I see included projects which are no longer supported by Xamarin Studio. I'm new to Xamarin mobile development and I used to hear that it supports all platforms including windows. So are there any major changes I should know about or any mandatory tools I may have neglected ?
I don't think there is a Windows emulator for a mac computer.
If you have a windows computer with visual studio 2017 you can choose to install the emulator with the installer.
PS: for the second part of your questions, new things get added to Xamarin which end up in not supporting every version.
For example I use async methods to get data from WCF service en put them in my local database. Async methods are supported in Xamarin. However your computer needs at least Xamarin.Android version 4.8+ to be able to utilize async methods.

Visual Studio Xamarin not building Android packaged_resources is missing

I am using Visual Studio Community Edition 2015 with Xamarin and I can't run my Android project successfully. It doesn't look like the android objects are getting created in the \obj folder. An error gets thrown that the packaged_resources doesn't exist. I notice that alot of other files don't get created in the \obj folder. The Emulator starts fine, but my project is not loaded in the Emulator. So I wonder, does Xamarin not work with Visual Studio Community Edition? I don't see any minimum requirements on the Xamarin website.
You are using a preview Android SDK build-tools version(preview 24) that we might not support quite yet :)
You can change your build-tools version via the $(AndroidSdkBuildToolsVersion) property.
i.e.
<AndroidSdkBuildToolsVersion>23.0.3</AndroidSdkBuildToolsVersion>
Further documentation
https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/android/under_the_hood/build_process/#Packaging_Properties
Xamarin is totally compatible with Visual Studio Community edition, so this may be indicative of a different problem. I can think of a few possible causes, but to confirm anything I would need to see a copy of the build log, preferably the full diagnostic variant.
If you are unsure on how to obtain this, there is a guide here: https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/android/troubleshooting/troubleshooting/#Diagnostic_MSBuild_Output
Thanks!

Visual Studio 2015 configuring a single C++ project for Android and Windows platforms

In Visual Studio Community 2015 I'm trying to create a static library that would be shared between Android and Windows platform projects. I've successfully created the library project for Android platform and I'm using it without any problem.
Howerver, I can't seem to find a way how to add a Windows platform support for my library project!
It looks like for my currently created android static library project (called "Engine") a "<New...>" option is missing in the selection box!?
EDIT: I've created my library as a Visual C++ - Cross Platform - Static library (Android) in a hope that I will be able to add the C++ Windows x86 and x64 platform support later on. But now I'm struggling to find a way to do that.
Is there any way I can use a single project for Android and Windows platforms? (Like i.e. using x86 and x64 for Windows...)
Ok, looks like it's not possible to have a single C++ project configurable for multiple platforms (like i.e. for android and windows platforms)
After doing some research I've noticed that there is a nice way to share the same source code between multiple project in a bit similar ways as if using the static library!
This suits for me perfectly because I have some "common" things that I want my Android and Windows platform projects to share.
Then to i.e. you Windows or Android project properties menu.
Click "Add" -> "Reference..."
In the "Add Reference" window go to "Shared Projects" and select your desired "sharable" project.
That's it!

Android in Visual Studio [duplicate]

Can you use Visual Studio for Android Development?
If so how would you set the android SDK instead of .NET framework and are there any special settings or configuration?
Yes, you can use Visual Studio for Android (native) using "vs-android".
Here are the steps to set it up:
Download the Android SDK here.
Download the Android NDK here.
Download Cygwin here.
Download the JDK here.
Download Visual Studio 2010, 2012 or 2013 here.
Download vs-android here.
Download Apache Ant here.
Set environment variables:
(Control Panel > System > Advanced > Environment Variables)
ANDROID_HOME = <install_path>\android-sdk
ANDROID_NDK_ROOT = <install_path>\android-ndk
ANT_HOME = <install_path>\apache-ant
JAVA_HOME = <install_path>\jdk
_JAVA_OPTIONS = -Xms256m -Xmx512m
Download examples from here.
It works like a charm... and best so far to use.
Yes you can:
http://www.gavpugh.com/2011/02/04/vs-android-developing-for-android-in-visual-studio/
In case you get "Unable to locate tools.jar. Expected to find it in C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\lib\tools.jar" you can add an environment variable JAVA_HOME that points to your Java JDK path, for example c:\sdks\glassfish3\jdk (restart MSVC afterwards)
An even better solution is using WinGDB Mobile Edition in Visual Studio: it lets you create and debug Android projects all inside Visual Studio:
http://ian-ni-lewis.blogspot.com/2011/01/its-like-coming-home-again.html
Download WinGDC for Android from
http://www.wingdb.com/wgMobileEdition.htm
Believe me, I've tried so hard to find a decent IDE for Android developement but I failed. I used Visual Studio for many years, and it is so hard for me to get use to the way Eclipse doing things.
However, the new IntelliJ supports for Android development, it's the closest you can get.
From the Android documentation:
The recommended way to develop an Android application is to use Eclipse with the ADT plugin... However, if you'd rather develop your application in another IDE, such as IntelliJ, or in a basic editor, such as Emacs, you can do that instead.
Currently, there are plug-ins for IntelliJ IDEA and NetBeans, but you can still use the tools in /tools to build, debug, monitor, measure and start the emulator.
Much has changed since this question was asked. Visual Studio 2013 with update 4 and Visual Studio 2015 now have integrated tools for Apache Cordova and you can run them on a Visual Studio emulator for Android.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 now has options for Android development: C++, Cordova, and C# with Xamarin. When choosing one of those Android development options, Visual Studio will also install the brand new Visual Studio Emulator for Android to use as a target for debugging your app. You can also download the emulator without needing to install Visual Studio. For more details see
Visuals Studio 2015
https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/downloads/visual-studio-2015-downloads-vs
Visual Studio Emulator
https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/features/msft-android-emulator-vs.aspx
Video of features https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Visual-Studio/Visual-Studio-2015-Final-Release-Event/Visual-Studio-Emulator-for-Android
Java Extension for Visuals Studio 2012, 2013. 2015
https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/bc561769-36ff-4a40-9504-e266e8706f93
That depends on what you actually want to achieve.
You want to keep on making normal Java-based Android application, but use Visual Studio for development? Then it's bad news, as Visual Studio has no built-in java support. Thus, if you use it out-of-the-box, you will lose all Java-specific Eclipse functionality (IntelliSense for Java, Java debugger, wizards, etc) as well as numerous Android plugins (that are Eclipse-specific and won't work with VS).
On the other hand, you can use Mono for Android to develop apps in C# in VS, but they won't look as smooth as the native apps (some functionality might be missing, look-and-feel slightly different, etc.). In that case such app could sell less than a "normal" Java app that looks and feels like all other Java apps.
If you are talking about native Android code (in C/C++), such as games, the news are not as bad. As Visual Studio has no problem with C++, there are numerous ways to make it work:
If you only want to compile your code, you can use the free vs-android toolset. It's essentially a set of build rules telling Visual Studio how to launch Android compiler.
If you want to compile and debug your native code with Visual Studio, you will need something more advanced, such as VisualGDB for Android. It can build/debug your Native code independently, or together with debugging Java code from Eclipse.
I know this q is quite old but it might me useful:
http://blogs.nvidia.com/2013/02/nvidia-introduces-nsight-tegra-to-assist-android-developers/
Besides, you can use VS for Android development too, because in the end, the IDE is nothing but a fancy text editor with shortcuts to command line tools, so most popular IDE's can be used.
However, if you want to develop fully native without restrictions, you'll have all kinds of issues, such as those related to file system case insensitivity and missing libraries on Windows platform..
If you try to build windows mobile apps on Linux platform, you'll have bigger problems than other way around, but still makes most sense to use Linux with Eclipse for Android OS.
You can use Visual Studio for Android Development. See a nice article on it here
I suppose you can open Java files in Visual Studio and just use the command line tools directly. I don't think you'd get syntax highlighting or autocompletion though.
Eclipse is really not all that different from Visual Studio, and there are a lot of tools that are designed to make Android development more comfortable that work from within Eclipse.
You can Build rich native apps using C# and Xamarin with 100% of the native APIs exposed to you. Or push maximum performance using C++ with code that could be reused with iOS or Windows.
To follow along you’ll need a copy of Visual Studio, plus the ‘Mobile development with .NET’ workload. You can either enable this feature from first installation of Visual Studio or access it from the ‘Tools -> Get Tools and Features…’ menu item:
Visual Studio Installer
When testing and running your app you have the choice of doing so with either an Android emulator running on your development machine, or by directly connecting to an existing Android device. There’s no right option here and different developers prefer different form factors. If you choose the former option, you’ll need to ensure once you’ve selected the workload that on the right-hand pane (‘Installation details’) the checkboxes for Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager and Google Android Emulator are selected (as seen above).
This article will help you to do basic android application through visual studio. I'll put the link here below down.
https://developer.okta.com/blog/2018/12/27/build-a-basic-android-app-with-xamarin-and-visual-studio
If you want to create an Android application using c# language you can use Xamarin.
they created this great Cross Platform development tool which enables developers to develop iOS and Android apps in C# language.
Xamarin is offered in different licenses from free to enterprise levels but for not I will be using the starter version which is the free version. It includes the Xamarin Studio which is great start for those who want to try out creating their first apps for Android, they also offer a Business license which lets you develop in Visual Studio so you can use that rich experience similar to developing Web Apps or Windows Apps, then they have this Enterprise which contains everything
You can use Visual Studio 2015 to building cross-platform apps for Android, iOS, and Windows.
IDE: https://www.visualstudio.com/en-US/explore/cordova-vs
Hope this will help!

How can I use MS Visual Studio for Android Development?

Can you use Visual Studio for Android Development?
If so how would you set the android SDK instead of .NET framework and are there any special settings or configuration?
Yes, you can use Visual Studio for Android (native) using "vs-android".
Here are the steps to set it up:
Download the Android SDK here.
Download the Android NDK here.
Download Cygwin here.
Download the JDK here.
Download Visual Studio 2010, 2012 or 2013 here.
Download vs-android here.
Download Apache Ant here.
Set environment variables:
(Control Panel > System > Advanced > Environment Variables)
ANDROID_HOME = <install_path>\android-sdk
ANDROID_NDK_ROOT = <install_path>\android-ndk
ANT_HOME = <install_path>\apache-ant
JAVA_HOME = <install_path>\jdk
_JAVA_OPTIONS = -Xms256m -Xmx512m
Download examples from here.
It works like a charm... and best so far to use.
Yes you can:
http://www.gavpugh.com/2011/02/04/vs-android-developing-for-android-in-visual-studio/
In case you get "Unable to locate tools.jar. Expected to find it in C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\lib\tools.jar" you can add an environment variable JAVA_HOME that points to your Java JDK path, for example c:\sdks\glassfish3\jdk (restart MSVC afterwards)
An even better solution is using WinGDB Mobile Edition in Visual Studio: it lets you create and debug Android projects all inside Visual Studio:
http://ian-ni-lewis.blogspot.com/2011/01/its-like-coming-home-again.html
Download WinGDC for Android from
http://www.wingdb.com/wgMobileEdition.htm
Believe me, I've tried so hard to find a decent IDE for Android developement but I failed. I used Visual Studio for many years, and it is so hard for me to get use to the way Eclipse doing things.
However, the new IntelliJ supports for Android development, it's the closest you can get.
From the Android documentation:
The recommended way to develop an Android application is to use Eclipse with the ADT plugin... However, if you'd rather develop your application in another IDE, such as IntelliJ, or in a basic editor, such as Emacs, you can do that instead.
Currently, there are plug-ins for IntelliJ IDEA and NetBeans, but you can still use the tools in /tools to build, debug, monitor, measure and start the emulator.
Much has changed since this question was asked. Visual Studio 2013 with update 4 and Visual Studio 2015 now have integrated tools for Apache Cordova and you can run them on a Visual Studio emulator for Android.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 now has options for Android development: C++, Cordova, and C# with Xamarin. When choosing one of those Android development options, Visual Studio will also install the brand new Visual Studio Emulator for Android to use as a target for debugging your app. You can also download the emulator without needing to install Visual Studio. For more details see
Visuals Studio 2015
https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/downloads/visual-studio-2015-downloads-vs
Visual Studio Emulator
https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/features/msft-android-emulator-vs.aspx
Video of features https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Visual-Studio/Visual-Studio-2015-Final-Release-Event/Visual-Studio-Emulator-for-Android
Java Extension for Visuals Studio 2012, 2013. 2015
https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/bc561769-36ff-4a40-9504-e266e8706f93
That depends on what you actually want to achieve.
You want to keep on making normal Java-based Android application, but use Visual Studio for development? Then it's bad news, as Visual Studio has no built-in java support. Thus, if you use it out-of-the-box, you will lose all Java-specific Eclipse functionality (IntelliSense for Java, Java debugger, wizards, etc) as well as numerous Android plugins (that are Eclipse-specific and won't work with VS).
On the other hand, you can use Mono for Android to develop apps in C# in VS, but they won't look as smooth as the native apps (some functionality might be missing, look-and-feel slightly different, etc.). In that case such app could sell less than a "normal" Java app that looks and feels like all other Java apps.
If you are talking about native Android code (in C/C++), such as games, the news are not as bad. As Visual Studio has no problem with C++, there are numerous ways to make it work:
If you only want to compile your code, you can use the free vs-android toolset. It's essentially a set of build rules telling Visual Studio how to launch Android compiler.
If you want to compile and debug your native code with Visual Studio, you will need something more advanced, such as VisualGDB for Android. It can build/debug your Native code independently, or together with debugging Java code from Eclipse.
I know this q is quite old but it might me useful:
http://blogs.nvidia.com/2013/02/nvidia-introduces-nsight-tegra-to-assist-android-developers/
Besides, you can use VS for Android development too, because in the end, the IDE is nothing but a fancy text editor with shortcuts to command line tools, so most popular IDE's can be used.
However, if you want to develop fully native without restrictions, you'll have all kinds of issues, such as those related to file system case insensitivity and missing libraries on Windows platform..
If you try to build windows mobile apps on Linux platform, you'll have bigger problems than other way around, but still makes most sense to use Linux with Eclipse for Android OS.
You can use Visual Studio for Android Development. See a nice article on it here
I suppose you can open Java files in Visual Studio and just use the command line tools directly. I don't think you'd get syntax highlighting or autocompletion though.
Eclipse is really not all that different from Visual Studio, and there are a lot of tools that are designed to make Android development more comfortable that work from within Eclipse.
You can Build rich native apps using C# and Xamarin with 100% of the native APIs exposed to you. Or push maximum performance using C++ with code that could be reused with iOS or Windows.
To follow along you’ll need a copy of Visual Studio, plus the ‘Mobile development with .NET’ workload. You can either enable this feature from first installation of Visual Studio or access it from the ‘Tools -> Get Tools and Features…’ menu item:
Visual Studio Installer
When testing and running your app you have the choice of doing so with either an Android emulator running on your development machine, or by directly connecting to an existing Android device. There’s no right option here and different developers prefer different form factors. If you choose the former option, you’ll need to ensure once you’ve selected the workload that on the right-hand pane (‘Installation details’) the checkboxes for Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager and Google Android Emulator are selected (as seen above).
This article will help you to do basic android application through visual studio. I'll put the link here below down.
https://developer.okta.com/blog/2018/12/27/build-a-basic-android-app-with-xamarin-and-visual-studio
If you want to create an Android application using c# language you can use Xamarin.
they created this great Cross Platform development tool which enables developers to develop iOS and Android apps in C# language.
Xamarin is offered in different licenses from free to enterprise levels but for not I will be using the starter version which is the free version. It includes the Xamarin Studio which is great start for those who want to try out creating their first apps for Android, they also offer a Business license which lets you develop in Visual Studio so you can use that rich experience similar to developing Web Apps or Windows Apps, then they have this Enterprise which contains everything
You can use Visual Studio 2015 to building cross-platform apps for Android, iOS, and Windows.
IDE: https://www.visualstudio.com/en-US/explore/cordova-vs
Hope this will help!

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