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.NET .NET 8 .NET 9 .NET MAUI Android Blazor C# Desktop Developer F# General Getting Started Hybrid iOS macOS Mobile NuGet Preview Visual Studio Web What's New Windows Xamarin Xamarin.Forms

SLNX – XML-based Visual Studio Solution Files – No more cryptic GUIDs – How to Manage from CLI

Comprehending the intricacies of a system often requires more than just deciphering the code itself. It also involves understanding the web of dependencies that are inextricably linked to it.

This includes navigating through solution files, project files, package references, static asset management, build configuration, and other related components.

With .NET going cross-platform, SDK-style projects have been introduced. The project files have been significantly simplified. They are now more comprehensible. Due to their XML-based nature, they can be easily modified using a basic text editor.

Nonetheless, the restructuring of the Visual Studio solution file is long overdue due to its intricate layout and obscure GUIDs.

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.NET .NET 8 .NET 9 .NET MAUI Android Automation Blazor C# Desktop Developer General Getting Started Hybrid iOS macOS Mobile Preview Templates VS Code What's New Windows Xamarin Xamarin.Forms

Elevating .NET MAUI Item Templates: Simplified Namespace Resolution in Latest Release

Back in February, an article was published on the efficient utilization of Item Templates through the use of script automation. The article, titled .NET MAUI – Item Templates – Made Easy on CLI and VS Code, provides a detailed focus on this topic.

That article addressed two issues:

  • Better namespace resolution
  • Do more with fewer keystrokes

Now, the namespace resolution issue has been partially supported within the .NET SDK, eliminating the requirement for additional script files. A PR was submitted to the .NET Templating source repository, underwent review, and was subsequently merged into the main branch. This enhancement was then included in the release of .NET 9 Preview 6.

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.NET .NET 8 .NET 9 .NET MAUI Android Blazor C# Code Desktop Developer General Hybrid iOS macOS Mobile Preview Templates Visual Studio Web What's New Windows WinUI 3 Xamarin Xamarin.Forms

What’s New in .NET MAUI 9 Preview 2

Yesterday, the second preview release of the .NET MAUI 9 was hot off the press. Here is the changelog.

To install the preview version, please refer to this article: .NET MAUI on .NET 9.

The distinguishing characteristic of .NET MAUI, with its initial design objective, is its single-project architecture.

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.NET .NET 8 .NET MAUI Desktop Developer Preview Visual Studio Windows

.NET 8 SDK – Visual Studio 2022 Compatibility

Today being the second Tuesday of the month marks the occurrence of Patch Tuesday, signifying the release of a new set of updates.

The second preview for .NET 9 is now available in the Preview channel, while Quality updates have been made accessible in the stable channel.

Quite like the SDK, Visual Studio 2022 has also received updates. The latest update includes VS2022 17.10.0 Preview 2.0 and 17.9.3 in the Stable channel.

Note: The stable version 17.9.3 release incorporates .NET MAUI 8.0.7 (SR2) workload update, which was previously available as a NuGet package update.

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.NET .NET MAUI Android Blazor C# Desktop Developer DevOps Getting Started Hybrid iOS macOS Mobile Visual Studio VS Code Web Windows Xamarin Xamarin.Forms

Using Visual Studio Code for .NET MAUI Development

In August 2023, Microsoft made an official announcement regarding the retirement of Visual Studio for Mac, scheduled to take place by August 31, 2024 (in another 6 months), as stated in a blog post here.

In the same blog post, Visual Studio Code along with the C# Dev Kit is projected as a viable alternative for cross-platform .NET development. For further information on the C# Dev Kit, refer to this article.

And for .NET MAUI too, there’s an officially supported extension hosted on VS Marketplace. To know more about this, take a look at this article. C# Dev Kit is a dependency for this .NET MAUI extension.

In light of the recent announcements, the article has been updated to incorporate info on support for JetBrains Rider IDE at the conclusion.

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.NET .NET 8 .NET MAUI Android Blazor C# Desktop Developer DevOps Hybrid iOS macOS Mobile Templates Windows Xamarin Xamarin.Forms

.NET MAUI – Nightly Builds

At first, .NET 6 and .NET 7 versions of .NET MAUI were released only via SDK Workloads whereas from .NET 8 onwards (Preview 4 to be precise), it is now distributed as a base workload and suite of NuGet packages on top of it.

This NuGet-based release process allows trying different versions of .NET MAUI which are released on top of a base workload on the same machine without the complexities of moving between different workload versions.

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.NET .NET 8 .NET 9 .NET MAUI Android Blazor C# Desktop Developer F# Getting Started Hybrid iOS macOS Mobile NuGet Templates Visual Studio Web Windows Xamarin Xamarin.Forms

.NET MAUI on .NET 9

Last Tuesday, the first preview of .NET 9, an STS release, was released along with Visual Studio 2022 17.10 Preview 1.0

Nov 2024 Update: An article has already been published detailing the comprehensive features of .NET MAUI 9.

A detailed blog post describing the Vision for .NET 9 is here. Moving forward, preview releases will be published in the GitHub discussion and for Preview 1 here.

And what’s changed in this .NET MAUI 9 Preview 1 is here. Have a look at the tentatively planned features on .NET 9 here and Roadmap here.

.NET 9 Preview 2 is available now:

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.NET .NET MAUI Android Automation Blazor Deep Dive Desktop Developer General Hybrid iOS Mobile MVVM NuGet Templates Visual Studio VS Code What's New Windows Xamarin Xamarin.Forms

.NET MAUI – Item Templates – Made Easy on CLI and VS Code

Even though the All-in-One item templates have the same set of features in VS2022 and on the CLI. The CLI has its own limitations and here are the notable ones:

  1. The namespace resolution is not on par with its VS counterpart
    • On CLI – Defaults to the root namespace
    • Whereas in VS to the exact folder where the item is created
  2. A lot of (repeated) typing is required
    • The underlying reason is CLI’s named parameters design
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.NET .NET MAUI Android Blazor Desktop Developer Getting Started Hybrid iOS Learn Mobile Video Visual Studio VS Code Web What's New Windows Xamarin Xamarin.Forms

.NET MAUI Minutes

.NET MAUI Minutes is a short video that provides a quick intro to the feature by Maddy Montaquilla. Learn .NET MAUI visually.

This gets uploaded on the official dotnet channel on YouTube periodically.

Have created a playlist to keep track of it. Bookmark it.

Happy coding. Stay connected as we continue to learn and share the experiences from this exciting journey of being a .NET developer.

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.NET .NET MAUI Android Blazor Desktop Developer Extensions Getting Started iOS Mobile MVVM NuGet Templates Visual Studio What's New Windows Xamarin Xamarin.Forms

Introducing Xamarin.Forms Templates

Quite like the .NET MAUI All-in-One Templates Pack, there’s a similar template pack for Xamarin.Forms too and is available as both a CLI Template and a VS Extension. Here’s the command to install the CLI part.