I am developing cross plateform mobile app using Xamarin,
We have Prod, Test and Dev source control environment,
Is it possible to have all 3 environment apps installed on a single device?
So I that I can see 3 apps on my device and run it?
Related
I want to build a game with React Native. I am doing my testing locally on a personal Android device using the Expo app but ideally would love for the app to be cross platform. I do want to release it to a public store or have it be available for folks to play in some format.
Is it OK if I am using Visual Studio Code (on a Windows machine) to build my app, using node.js command line to run expo commands and testing with live reloading on my Expo app? Do I need to have a Mac + XCode if I want to edit iOS code?
What is the typical development process/toolset used?
React Native IS cross-platform, building the apps for production on different platforms, however, requires a different procedure. What makes it cross platform is that you write the source codes including all of the components (Well most of them) one time, and it automatically generates the native codes for Android and IOS.
There's no typical toolset for writing code, you can use any code editor you prefer (I use Sublime for example), but you should have the needed requirements listed in the getting started page in the official official docs including node.js.
Expo helps in testing the app on both android and ios without the need of a Mac (it has some other cool features too!). So if you want to release to apple store, you'll definitely need a mac (or a virtual machine running MacOS like VMWare)
In order to generate the release apk for android: Android Release APK
and for IOS: IOS
I want to share an enterprise Xamarin Forms app with some users in the company for beta testing. These are iPhone users. I understand that the app can be shared via a link that is sent in an email.
Do the beta users need to run some wrapper app to run my app or would the app just work as a normal iOS app?
I'm aware that a Mac or a Mac service e.g. MacInCloud.com is necessary for building and submitting iOS apps.
My question is about the actual workflow of building an app on Windows using Xamarin on Visual Studio 2017.
We need to write code, test and debug throughout development cycle. How does this work with Xamarin running on Windows? How would I actually see what my mobile app looks like or behaves during the actual development cycle?
While developing my web apps in Visual Studio, there are many trips back and forth to the browsers and back to VS in order for me to see the results of my code. How does this work with Xamarin running on Windows? Is Xamarin Live Player the only option for development cycle? Is there a solution through MacInCloud or similar services so that tethering a device to dev machine is not necessary?
I'm just trying to understand how a healthy development cycle is created for Xamarin developers on Windows.
I will answer your question in few section: Coding, Debug, Test
Coding
You will be using Visual Studio to write your codes. iOS and Android code will be written in C#. You will get access to UI Designer for both iOS and Android to edit the layout files and storyboard/xibs. For 3rd party library, there is NuGet to serve your needs.
Debug
You can use Xamarin Live Player without connection to a Mac/MacInCloud for basic preview. However, some features of iOS is not available in Xamarin Live Player (e.g. xibs files not supported...).
If you setup with connection to a Mac, you will be able to see a list of Simulator that available in the Mac you connected to. By default, if you debug it, the simulator will still show up in the Mac. Then you will need to VMWare or remote into the Mac to check the simulator output. If you have Visual Studio Enterprise license, you can get access to a Remote iOS Simulator feature. You will need to turn the option ON. After that, you will able to see a remote iOS Simulator showing in your Windows machine without the needs to remote into Mac machine anymore. For debugging in actual iOS devices, you will still need to plug your device into the Mac. Previously (more than 1 years ago), Xamarin announce that they are working on "iOS USB remoting" to allow you to plug in iOS device into Windows machine and debug on it. But it is not release until now.
For Android, you can get access to Android Emulator Manager to add emulator to debug or you can deploy apps to physical phone just like what you can do with Android Studio.
Test
I will be referring to Xamarin.UITest for this part. You will be able to write UITest code in C# inside Visual Studio. Xamarin have product "Xamarin Test Cloud" to allow you to upload test code and binary and then run your test in cloud periodically. If you want to run the test locally in your machine, you will only able to run Android UITest in windows machine. To run iOS UITest locally, you will only able to run it in Mac machine. Using a Mac, you can also run Android UITest.
You can use a simulator/emulator instead of a device. For iOS, the simulator would run on the Mac Build Host that you are connected to. You can select the option for "Remote iOS simulator" in Visual Studio -> Xamarin.iOS options and you'll be able to interact with the simulator without having to RDP/VNC/look at the mac. For android, you can just run an emulator in Window and interact with it like that. Using your web apps comparison, you would use a simulator/emulator instead of browser but, for the most part, the process would be similar.
I have been developing a Xamarin MVVM app targeted at iOS and Android. I initially did the iOS development on Windows with VS 2022 and an iPhone attached via USB. I knew that I was going to have to eventually move to the Mac for final provisioning but I ended up taking that painful step earlier than planned because certain Xamarin features were just not working on Windows. First I could not get my app icon to be anything other than the Xamarin default and then Xamarin.Essentials.FilePicker would not select a file:
https://github.com/xamarin/Essentials/issues/1710
So after a week of struggling I finally got my project building and deploying on the Mac. However, I am not nearly as comfortable working on the Mac as I am on Windows where I have all my familiar development tools. So then the question was how to share the project files between the PC and the Mac so that I could edit and compile on the PC and then move to the Mac for final testing.
At first I tried iCloud but I could never get the files to sync reliably between the shared folder on the PC and the Mac. I am used to Dropbox and OneDrive, which work as expected. iCloud not so much.
So what I have been doing is committing and pushing the changes to github and then pulling the changes into the project on the Mac. It is quick and has the added benefit of version control using an offsite server. I am happy with this workflow and publishing the app on the Apple Store should be an easy task when that time comes.
Update:
This process is still working for me. I have taken the additional step of doing the release configuration on VS Mac and publishing my app to App Store Connect. That experience was convoluted and frustrating but it now works and I have people testing my app via TestFlight.
One hiccup is that when selecting Automatic iOS Bundle Signing in the project properties on VS Windows, this change gets pushed to the Mac side and causes a build error under Debug until I select the Automatic provisioning profile on the Mac. Somehow it gets set to the Wildcard profile on the Windows side.
I want to deploy my first iOS App created with Xamarin Forms to the AppStore or at least to a single device. I have an Apple Developer Account and performed this task several times before using xCode and native iOS Apps.
But as a Windows guy I hoped to get this done for Xamarin using my VST for Windows.
But all guides and tutorials I found are only explaining how I can deploy iOS Apps to the store and to devices using VST for Mac ... Is this the only way? How do I get the code to the Mac? Can I use the TFS Source Control? Do I have to commit every little change to TFS, check it out at the Mac, rebuild the whole app there and deploy it from the Mac?
Or are there ways and workflows that work with Windows only having the Mac 'in the background' via network?
Take a look at https://mobile.azure.com (the best solution for continuous app development: analytics, crash reports, iOS/Android/UWP builds + deploy)
I'll address the second part of your question - the ability to deploy to a single device. I'm assuming that the single device is your own device and you want to deploy via compilation. This can certainly be done from your Windows machine but due to apple licensing requirements, you will need your Mac available to compile and deploy to your phone. Your iPhone/iPad will need to be plugged into your Mac's USB.
The guides listed on the Xamarin website outline how to set up the mac build host. https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/ios/getting_started/installation/windows/connecting-to-mac/ In short, you need some prerequisites (Remote Sharing turned on, XCode installed, etc).
Once you've connected Visual Studio to your Mac, set the iOS project as the startup project, change the config from Debug to iPhone, and press F5 to compile and deploy to your device.
When in doubt, select iPhoneSimulator instead of iPhone. The simulator isn't subjected to provisioning and signing profiles which can be daunting to setup. If you can get the simulator working, you've solved the software and connectivity prerequisites.
There's a lot to configure, but it does work. This is my primary setup for Xamarin.Forms development.
I will start to develop a mobile app using a cross platform.The app has multiple pie charts and graphs. App needs to run on Android, iOS and Windows platform. I am evaluating 2 options for cross platform:
1. React Native
2. Xamarin
I've gone through the documentation for RN windows platform(https://github.com/ReactWindows/react-native-windows)
It appears that React Native has limited support for Windows app development as of now.
Has anybody developed a full-fledged windows mobile app using React Native? If there are blockers for React Native windows, I would choose Xamarin as a development Platform.
Can someone please guide me regarding this? Thanks.
React Native Windows has several sample applications, namely Facebook's own f8 app that prove it works well on Windows 10 mobile, desktop, or even Xbox One and Xbox Series S/X consoles. If you run into specific issues, you can file them in the GitHub project.