Apr 04, 2018 1) Using Visual Studio for MAC, Cocoa template and Mono framework. Generated.app files needs to sit in each and every individual machine which is triggered based on some conditions.(Not in App store, Installed in every machine by local team) Generated Devoloper ID certificate. Selected Devoloper ID certificate in MAC Signing section. After developing chunk of your app within Visual Studio MAC, the best is to get the code on the windows machine and arrange it to work in UWP. UWP apps compile fastly and like a charm, so better is to get rid of errors within macOS, IOS, Android, and then go and adapt to UWP. Jan 29, 2020 With this release of Visual Studio for Mac, you can now create ASP.NET Core projects with either No Authentication or Individual Authentication that uses an In-App store (which is the most used auth option). Feb 25, 2019 Visual Studio IDE for Mac and Windows. Allows creating applications for almost any platform. Full-fledged development environment with all the tools to create the programming product. Visual Studio App Center. Allows to build, deploy, repeat, test, and engage the apps. Visual Studio Team Services. A great tool for teams. Visual Studio Code.
First-class support for Xamarin allows you to develop rich native experiences for Android, macOS, iOS, tvOS, and watchOS. Xamarin.Forms cross-platform applications help you share XAML-based UI code between Android, iOS, and macOS without limiting access to native functionality.
Xamarin.Forms
XAML Hot Reload for Xamarin.Forms is built into Visual Studio for Mac in version 8.3 and later. With this feature enabled changes are instantly reflected in your running app every time you save the file.
XAML Hot Reload can be enabled by checking the Enable Xamarin Hot Reload checkbox at Visual Studio > Preferences > Projects > Xamarin Hot Reload.
For more information on Hot Reload, see the XAML Hot Reload for Xamarin.Forms guide within the documentation.
Android
Visual Studio for Mac has its own integrated Android SDK manager, allowing you access to the SDKs you want your app to target.
For Android applications, Visual Studio for Mac includes its own designer, which works with Android
.axml files tovisually construct user interfaces. Visual Studio for Mac will open these files in its Android Designer, as illustrated in the following image:
For more information on the Android Designer, see the Xamarin.Android Designer Overview guide.
iOS
The iOS Designer is fully integrated with Visual Studio for Mac and enables visual editing of .xib and Storyboard files to create iOS, tvOS, and WatchOS UIs and transitions. The entire user interface can be built using drag-and-drop functionality between the Toolbox and Design Surface, while using an intuitive approach to handling events. The iOS Designer also supports custom controls with the added benefit of design-time rendering.
For more information on using the iOS Designer, see the Designer guides.
Mac
Xamarin provides native Mac API bindings that allow you to create beautiful Mac applications.
For more information on writing Mac applications with Visual Studio for Mac, refer to the Xamarin.Mac guides.
Xamarin Enterprise features
Note
These products can only be used with a Visual Studio Enterprise subscription.
Profiler
The Xamarin Profiler has three instruments available for profiling. The Introduction to the Xamarin Profiler guide explores what these instruments measure and how they analyze your application, and clarifies the meaning of the data presented on each screen.
Inspector
The Xamarin Inspector provides an interactive C# console with user tools. It can be used as a debugging or diagnostics aid when inspecting live applications, as a teaching tool, as a documentation tool, or an experimentation tool.
It consists of a standalone application that provides a rich C# console that can target various programming platforms (Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows) and integrate into your IDEs debugging workflow.
For more information, see the Xamarin Inspector guide.
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Xamarin.Mac allows for the development of fully native Mac apps in C# and .NET using the same macOS APIs that are used when developing in Objective-C or Swift. Because Xamarin.Mac integrates directly with Xcode, the developer can use Xcode's Interface Builder to create an app's user interfaces (or optionally create them directly in C# code).
Additionally, since Xamarin.Mac applications are written in C# and .NET, code can be shared with Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android mobile apps; all while delivering a native experience on each platform.
This article will introduce the key concepts needed to create a Mac app using Xamarin.Mac, Visual Studio for Mac and Xcode's Interface Builder by walking through the process of building a simple Hello, Mac app that counts the number of times a button has been clicked:
The following concepts will be covered:
Requirements
Xamarin.Mac application development requires:
To run an application built with Xamarin.Mac, you will need:
Warning
The upcoming Xamarin.Mac 4.8 release will only support macOS 10.9 or higher.Previous versions of Xamarin.Mac supported macOS 10.7 or higher, butthese older macOS versions lack sufficient TLS infrastructure to supportTLS 1.2. To target macOS 10.7 or macOS 10.8, use Xamarin.Mac 4.6 orearlier.
Starting a new Xamarin.Mac App in Visual Studio for Mac
As stated above, this guide will walk through the steps to create a Mac app called
Hello_Mac that adds a single button and label to the main window. When the button is clicked, the label will display the number of times it has been clicked.
To get started, do the following steps:
Visual Studio for Mac will create the new Xamarin.Mac app and display the default files that get added to the app's solution:
Visual Studio for Mac uses the same Solution and Project structure as Visual Studio 2019. A solution is a container that can hold one or more projects; projects can include applications, supporting libraries, test applications, etc. The File > New Project template creates a solution and an application project automatically.
Anatomy of a Xamarin.Mac Application
Xamarin.Mac application programming is very similar to working with Xamarin.iOS. iOS uses the CocoaTouch framework, which is a slimmed-down version of Cocoa, used by Mac.
Take a look at the files in the project:
The following sections, will take a quick look through some of these files. Later, they will be explored in more detail, but it’s a good idea to understand their basics now.
Main.cs
The Main.cs file is very simple. It contains a static
Main method which creates a new Xamarin.Mac app instance and passes the name of the class that will handle OS events, which in this case is the AppDelegate class:
AppDelegate.cs
The
AppDelegate.cs file contains an AppDelegate class, which is responsible for creating windows and listening to OS events:
This code is probably unfamiliar unless the developer has built an iOS app before, but it’s fairly simple.
The
DidFinishLaunching method runs after the app has been instantiated, and it’s responsible for actually creating the app's window and beginning the process of displaying the view in it.
The
WillTerminate method will be called when the user or the system has instantiated a shutdown of the app. The developer should use this method to finalize the app before it quits (such as saving user preferences or window size and location).
ViewController.cs
Cocoa (and by derivation, CocoaTouch) uses what’s known as the Model View Controller (MVC) pattern. The
ViewController declaration represents the object that controls the actual app window. Generally, for every window created (and for many other things within windows), there is a controller, which is responsible for the window’s lifecycle, such as showing it, adding new views (controls) to it, etc.
The
ViewController class is the main window’s controller. The controller is responsible for the life cycle of the main window. This will be examined in detail later, for now take a quick look at it:
ViewController.Designer.cs
The designer file for the Main Window class is initially empty, but it will be automatically populated by Visual Studio for Mac as the user interface is created with Xcode Interface Builder: Mac os high sierra download app.
Designer files should not be edited directly, as they’re automatically managed by Visual Studio for Mac to provide the plumbing code that allows access to controls that have been added to any window or view in the app.
With the Xamarin.Mac app project created and a basic understanding of its components, switch to Xcode to create the user interface using Interface Builder.
Info.plist
The
Info.plist file contains information about the Xamarin.Mac app such as its Name and Bundle Identifier:
It also defines the Storyboard that will be used to display the user interface for the Xamarin.Mac app under the Main Interface dropdown. In example above,
Main in the dropdown relates to the Main.storyboard in the project's source tree in the Solution Explorer. It also defines the app's icons by specifying the Asset Catalog that contains them (AppIcon in this case).
Entitlements.plist
The app's
Entitlements.plist file controls entitlements that the Xamarin.Mac app has such as Sandboxing and iCloud:
For the Hello World example, no entitlements will be required. The next section shows how to use Xcode's Interface Builder to edit the Main.storyboard file and define the Xamarin.Mac app's UI.
Introduction to Xcode and Interface Builder
As part of Xcode, Apple has created a tool called Interface Builder, which allows a developer to create a user interface visually in a designer. Xamarin.Mac integrates fluently with Interface Builder, allowing UI to be created with the same tools as Objective-C users.
To get started, double-click the
Main.storyboard file in the Solution Explorer to open it for editing in Xcode and Interface Builder:
This should launch Xcode and look like this screenshot:
Before starting to design the interface, take a quick overview of Xcode to orient with the main features that will be used.
Note
The developer doesn't have to use Xcode and Interface Builder to create the user interface for a Xamarin.Mac app, the UI can be created directly from C# code but that is beyond the scope of this article. For the sake of simplicity, it will be using Interface Builder to create the user interface throughout the rest of this tutorial.
Components of Xcode
When opening a .storyboard file in Xcode from Visual Studio for Mac, it opens with a Project Navigator on the left, the Interface Hierarchy and Interface Editor in the middle, and a Properties & Utilities section on the right:
The following sections take a look at what each of these Xcode features do and how to use them to create the interface for a Xamarin.Mac app.
Project Navigation
When opening a .storyboard file for editing in Xcode, Visual Studio for Mac creates a Xcode Project File in the background to communicate changes between itself and Xcode. Later, when the developer switches back to Visual Studio for Mac from Xcode, any changes made to this project are synchronized with the Xamarin.Mac project by Visual Studio for Mac.
The Project Navigation section allows the developer to navigate between all of the files that make up this shim Xcode project. Typically, they will only be interested in the
.storyboard files in this list such as Main.storyboard .
Interface Hierarchy
The Interface Hierarchy section allows the developer to easily access several key properties of the user interface such as its Placeholders and main Window. This section can be used to access the individual elements (views) that make up the user interface and to adjust the way they are nested by dragging them around within the hierarchy.
Interface Editor
The Interface Editor section provides the surface on which the user interface is graphically laid out. Drag elements from the Library section of the Properties & Utilities section to create the design. As user interface elements (views) are added to the design surface, they will be added to the Interface Hierarchy section in the order that they appear in the Interface Editor.
Properties & Utilities
The Properties & Utilities section is divided into two main sections, Properties (also called Inspectors) and the Library:
Initially this section is almost empty, however if the developer selects an element in the Interface Editor or Interface Hierarchy, the Properties section will be populated with information about the given element and properties that they can adjust.
Within the Properties section, there are eight different Inspector Tabs, as shown in the following illustration:
Properties & Utility Types
From left-to-right, these tabs are:
Use the Library section to find controls and objects to place into the designer to graphically build the user interface:
Creating the Interface
With the basics of the Xcode IDE and Interface Builder covered, the developer can create the user interface for the main view.
Follow these steps to use Interface Builder:
While resizing and moving controls around, notice that Interface Builder gives helpful snap hints that are based on macOS Human Interface Guidelines. These guidelines will help the developer to create high quality apps that will have a familiar look and feel for Mac users.
Look in the Interface Hierarchy section to see how the layout and hierarchy of the elements that make up the user interface are shown:
From here the developer can select items to edit or drag to reorder UI elements if needed. For example, if a UI element was being covered by another element, they could drag it to the bottom of the list to make it the top-most item on the window.
With the user interface created, the developer will need to expose the UI items so that Xamarin.Mac can access and interact with them in C# code. The next section, Outlets and Actions, shows how to do this.
Outlets and Actions
So what are Outlets and Actions? In traditional .NET user interface programming, a control in the user interface is automatically exposed as a property when it’s added. Things work differently in Mac, simply adding a control to a view doesn’t make it accessible to code. The developer must explicitly expose the UI element to code. In order do this, Apple provides two options:
In Xcode, Outlets and Actions are added directly in code via Control-dragging. More specifically, this means that to create an Outlet or Action, the developer will choose a control element to add an Outlet or Action to, hold down the Control key on the keyboard, and drag that control directly into the code.
For Xamarin.Mac developers, this means that the developer will drag into the Objective-C stub files that correspond to the C# file where they want to create the Outlet or Action. Visual Studio for Mac created a file called
ViewController.h as part of the shim Xcode Project it generated to use Interface Builder:
This stub
.h file mirrors the ViewController.designer.cs that is automatically added to a Xamarin.Mac project when a new NSWindow is created. This file will be used to synchronize the changes made by Interface Builder and is where the Outlets and Actions are created so that UI elements are exposed to C# code.
Adding an Outlet
With a basic understanding of what Outlets and Actions are, create an Outlet to expose the Label created to our C# code.
Do the following:
Adding an Action
Next, expose the button to C# code. Just like the Label above, the developer could wire the button up to an Outlet. Since we only want to respond to the button being clicked, use an Action instead.
Do the following:
With the user interface wired-up and exposed to C# code, switch back to Visual Studio for Mac and let it synchronize the changes made in Xcode and Interface Builder.
Note
It probably took a long time to create the user interface and Outlets and Actions for this first app, and it may seem like a lot of work, but a lot of new concepts were introduced and a lot of time was spent covering new ground. After practicing for a while and working with Interface Builder, this interface and all its Outlets and Actions can be created in just a minute or two.
Visual Studio Mac App Development FreeSynchronizing Changes with Xcode
When the developer switches back to Visual Studio for Mac from Xcode, any changes that they have made in Xcode will automatically be synchronized with the Xamarin.Mac project.
Select the ViewController.designer.cs in the Solution Explorer to see how the Outlet and Action have been wired up in the C# code:
Notice how the two definitions in the ViewController.designer.cs file:
Line up with the definitions in the
ViewController.h file in Xcode:
Visual Studio for Mac listens for changes to the .h file, and then automatically synchronizes those changes in the respective .designer.cs file to expose them to the app. Notice that ViewController.designer.cs is a partial class, so that Visual Studio for Mac doesn't have to modify ViewController.cs which would overwrite any changes that the developer has made to the class.
Normally, the developer will never need to open the ViewController.designer.cs, it was presented here for educational purposes only.
Note
In most situations, Visual Studio for Mac will automatically see any changes made in Xcode and sync them to the Xamarin.Mac project. In the off occurrence that synchronization doesn't automatically happen, switch back to Xcode and then back to Visual Studio for Mac again. This will normally kick off a synchronization cycle.
Writing the Code
With the user interface created and its UI elements exposed to code via Outlets and Actions, we are finally ready to write the code to bring the program to life.
For this sample app, every time the first button is clicked, the label will be updated to show how many times the button has been clicked. To accomplish this, open the
ViewController.cs file for editing by double-clicking it in the Solution Explorer:
First, create a class-level variable in the
ViewController class to track the number of clicks that have happened. Edit the class definition and make it look like the following:
Next, in the same class (
ViewController ), override the ViewDidLoad method and add some code to set the initial message for the label:
Use
ViewDidLoad , instead of another method such as Initialize , because ViewDidLoad is called after the OShas loaded and instantiated the user interface from the .storyboard file. If the developer tried to access the label control before the .storyboard file has been fully loaded and instantiated, they would get a NullReferenceException error because the label control would not exist yet.
Next, add the code to respond to the user clicking the button. Add the following partial method to the
ViewController class:
This code attaches to the Action created in Xcode and Interface Builder and will be called any time the user clicks the button.
Testing the Application
It’s time to build and run the app to make sure it runs as expected. The developer can build and run all in one step, or they can build it without running it.
Whenever an app is built, the developer can choose what kind of build they want:
The developer can select the type of build from the Configuration Selector at the upper left-hand corner of the Visual Studio for Mac screen:
Building the Application
In the case of this example, we just want a debug build, so ensure that Debug is selected. Build the app first by either pressing ⌘B, or from the Build menu, choose Build All.
If there weren't any errors, a Build Succeeded message will be displayed in Visual Studio for Mac's status bar. If there were errors, review the project and make sure that the steps above have been followed correctly. Start by confirming that the code (both in Xcode and in Visual Studio for Mac) matches the code in the tutorial.
Running the Application
There are three ways to run the app:
The app will build (if it hasn’t been built already), start in debug mode and display its main interface window:
If the button is clicked a few times, the label should be updated with the count:
Where to Next
With the basics of working with a Xamarin.Mac application down, take a look at the following documents to get a deeper understanding:
The Mac Samples Gallery contains ready-to-use code examples to help learn Xamarin.Mac.
Visual Studio Mac App Development Software
One complete Xamarin.Mac app that includes many of the features a user would expect to find in a typical Mac application is the SourceWriter Sample App. SourceWriter is a simple source code editor that provides support for code completion and simple syntax highlighting.
The SourceWriter code has been fully commented and, where available, links have been provided from key technologies or methods to relevant information in the Xamarin.Mac documentation.
SummaryMicrosoft Visual Studio For Mac
This article covered the basics of a standard Xamarin.Mac app. It covered creating a new app in Visual Studio for Mac, designing the user interface in Xcode and Interface Builder, exposing UI elements to C# code using Outlets and Actions, adding code to work with the UI elements and finally, building and testing a Xamarin.Mac app.
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