I have programmed a small app for Android with Xamarin Forms. I only tested the app with my Honor 7X and it works fine. Is there any other way that I can test the app for free at least on other virtual devices. I am new to Xamarin so I need some tips.
If you use Visual studio, you do not need to install third-part android emulator for your test in the android part.
You can using Android SDKs and Tools to install API in your VS like following screenshot.
Then you need to Hardware acceleration for emulator performance (Hyper-V & HAXM), choose suitable Hardware acceleration.
In the end, install emulators that you needed in device manager.
MS app center is not free, but it provide Free 30 day trial. After 30 days trial, Pay as your app grows
You can use Genymotion to testing all the API levels with different types of emulators. It's free for personal use. Refer this link,
Genymotion
Related
Can a C# app prototype be developed on my iPad Pro by using ONLY Visual Studio with Xamarin, on my Windows 10 Pro computer without buying (ie. using) a Mac?
Initially, for rapid development of non-distribution prototype, I want to use only VS 2017 Pro & Xamarin on Windows 10 to develop and test an app on my iPad Pro 12.9".
App will talk to other system components by WiFi, and utilize new iPad Pro features like pen and its high quality screen, for augmented reality.
Can get Mac later, in order to deploy on Apple store.
Can I truly develop, deploy onto actual iPad, and debug 100% with only VS & Xamarin, and without Mac and Xcode?
This Microsoft article about its Xamarin Live Player is confusing to me because it reads "the source code is interpreted" which I don't want, and later it reads "The app runs right on your phone or tablet." is I want.
Yes, a mac is required to build and debug iOS apps.
However, VSTS does allow you access to a mac build host which can build and deploy to TestFlight and the AppStore, if required (and if configured correctly). This won't allow you to debug and step through your code on a device or in the iOS Simulator, however. For that you need the Mac with High Sierra and the latest XCode installed.
Xamarin Live Player is in preview only and is only really useful for simple apps at the moment.
So, the answer is the company needs to buy me a new Mac. Yum.
The bad news is that it's back to using Xcode again. Two years ago, the star rating of Xcode on Apple Store was a mere 2-stars. It would be nice if the tool to develop on iOS was as easy to use as iOS. But, that's what Stackoverflow is for, I guess. :)
Whilst the existing answers/comments are correct I thought I'd add my own experience with this
If, like me, you won't use the mac for anything other than a build server for xamarin, I can say that a mac mini is fine for this, and will allow you to build apps. Just make sure you connect visual studio on your PC to the mac.
It's also worth noting, that more recently Visual studio team services has started using a hosted macOS build host. I haven't used this myself as I bought a mac mini, but in theory, if you use VSTS you might be able to build and deploy your iOS apps. I would suggest that you check it out.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/vsts/pipelines/apps/mobile/xamarin?view=vsts&tabs=vsts
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/devops/2017/11/16/cloud-hosted-mac-agents-for-ci-cd-pipelines/
Sadly this has always been the case with xamarin and it's the way apple licensing works.
I've been doing some research on this, but it seems like I couldn't find anything yet. So, I'm new to Xamarin and I've been building some small apps for fun. I cannot, however, use the VS Android emulator, as it is pretty heavy for my machine. Is there a way to use another emulator to run the apps?
Thanks a lot! :)
Provide more details about your problem so we can find a solution and make the VS Android Work.
You can use other Emulators like :
Xamarin Android Player
Genymotion
Andy OS
Refer : Visual Studio Android Emulator
If you have an Android Phone or Tablet my best advice would be to debug on that. If not (and you're not looking at investing in a new computer any time soon) my advice would be to look on eBay for a cheap, older Android phone (which is what I did as I like to use an iPhone) and debug on that. This proved to be an ideal solution for me as all I wanted to do was play about.
There are a lot of options with visual studio emulators for android. You can use devices from 1-3 RAM.
You can also create devices with Android Virtual Device and configure the RAM there.
I'm a .NET developer and want to write an IOS & Android app in C#. I've had a read around Xamarin for Visual Studio which looks interesting if not a tad expensive!
Do you need a Mac to debug your code? Do you just need a networked Mac to actually deploy the app to the Store?
Is the best option just to buy a Mac and run Windows with VS in a VM or can I just use my windows machine, write & debug the code in Windows then just hook up to a networked Mac for final deployment?
From May 2017, you can develop app without MAC.
Microsoft Xamarin introduce a Live Player. With Live Player, iOS apps can be deployed directly onto an iPhone or other iDevice from a PC running Visual Studio, where the code can then be tested and debugged.
WARNING The Xamarin Live Player Preview has ended. But it changed Hot Reload. With this feature, you can develop iOS app with your iPhone See discussion
See this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awgZDL1a3YI
this is Live Player Get start section: Live Player
Note: The final build and submission to the App Store will still require a Mac
Device Requirements
The Xamarin Live Player app supports the following devices:
iOS
iOS 9.0 or later.
ARM64 processor.
Check the App Store for a list of supported devices.
Android
Android 4.2 or later.
ARM-v7a, ARM-v8a, ARM64-v8a, x86, or x86_64 processor.
Limitations
There are some limitations on the things Xamarin Live Player can run, including the items below:
Android user interfaces designed with AXML files are not currently supported.
Some iOS storyboard features are not supported.
iOS XIB files are not supported.
Custom Renderers are not supported.
Xamarin.Forms Effects are not supported.
Embedded resources are not supported (ie. embedding images or other resources in a PCL).
Limited support for reflection (currently affects some popular NuGets, like SQLite and Json.NET). Other NuGets are still supported.
Some system classes cannot be overridden (for example, you cannot implement a subclass).
Some platform features that require provisioning can't work in the Xamarin Live Player app (however it has been configured for common operations like camera access).
Custom targets and build steps are ignored. For example, tools like Fody cannot be incorporated.
Yes, you must have a Mac to do Xamarin.iOS development. The Mac is required for building as well as running the iOS simulator. You can either use it as a build server, and actually do your development in Visual Studio (either in a standalone PC, or on a VM running on your Mac), or you can do your development directly on the Mac using Xamarin Studio as your IDE.
You can use Xamarin Studio instead of Visual Studio and build iOS application by C#.
First install VMware Workstation and then download OS X image and run it by VMware.
Then Install tools on it and enjoy.
Tools :
EDIT : The following links are out dated, You must install Mac OS 10.10 in order to be able to install XCode 6.
iOS Tools that you need:
1) Mac OS X image for Windows
Note: Max OS X Installation Help:
http://www.sysprobs.com/easily-run-mac-os-x-10-8-mountain-lion-retail-on-pc-with-vmware-image
2) Mono:
http://download.xamarin.com/MonoFrameworkMDK/Macx86/MonoFramework-MDK-3.2.4.macos10.xamarin.x86.pkg
3) Xamarin Studio:
http://download.xamarin.com/studio/Mac/XamarinStudio-4.2.1-1.dmg
4) MonoTouch:
http://download.xamarin.com/MonoTouch/Mac/monotouch-7.0.4.209.pkg
5) Xcode
Update 2018
Install VirtualBox
https://www.virtualbox.org/
Install MacOs 10.13 on VirtualBox
https://techsviewer.com/install-macos-high-sierra-virtualbox-windows/
Create or login with an apple account on the mac
Install XCode 9.0
https://download.developer.apple.com/Developer_Tools/Xcode_9/Xcode_9.xip
Enable Remote Login
System Preferences > Sharing > Remote Login > Enable for All Users
Configure VirtualBox with an additional network adaptor (host-only)
In Windows > Visual Studio (Xamarin Project) > Pair with mac
Enter the IPaddress of the second network adaptor
Let Visual studio install Xamarin IOS, IOS SDK, additional tools on the Mac
All set up.
An option is to use a remote service to do this.
For example:
http://www.macincloud.com
Anybody know that a Virtual-Machine is the solution! but when you want to have an OSX on windows it's not really easy as you just talked about it.
it's very important to find best OS ROM.
check it out here.
and you have to know that limitation is Apple's doing, not Xamarin's.
As someone that developed 3 Xamarin Forms apps, I would like to bring some points about the options:
Pair with a virtual Mac (VMWare, VirtualBox or cloud)
I worked this way for a while, but virtual machines consume a lot of hardware resources. Paid for a month to use a remote Mac, but the pairing and debugging process does not get much better.
Develop inside a virtual macOS
I have been using this option with good results. I just run everything on the macOS VMware virtual machine. Visual Studio and Emulator got a little slow (my CPU is i5 and 8GB ram), but is acceptable to make some adjusts. Advantages: Avoid pairing, Xcode to edit some resources, publishing.
Install macOS on Windows PC
This is kind of upgraded of previous suggestion. Didn't tested yet, but the performance should be better than VMWare if it works. They call this Hackintosh and is possible if your hardware is compatible.
Hi guys I have some questions regarding deploying apps from Xamarin for Android. I have a samsung s3 with jellybean 4.1 in it and I want to deploy my app that I developed from Xamarin to my phone. But my problem is I do not know how to deploy it on a jellybean 4.1 OS. We have tried ice cream sandwhich before but jellybean is something I'm not even sure about whether it is supported by Xamarin for android or not? Is it possible to deploy my app in my phone? And anyone of you guys who knows how to do it??? I'd appreciate the help thank you!
Yes, you can deploy to the S3 running JellyBean 4.1 (we are using one for testing).
Install the Samsung Kies manager on your dev machine so that you can get the latest device drivers. If your phone still doesn't come up as an option when debugging your code then make sure that USB Debugging is enabled on the device.
Also, make sure that your application is targeting the Android version you want at a minimum (right click the project -> Properties... -> Application -> Minimum Android to target).
There is no difference in procedure for deploying an app to Ice Cream Sandwich vs Jelly Bean.
Make sure your app's target SDK version is API 16 (API 17 if you want JellyBean 4.2). Follow the instructions I posted here to get the correct ADB drivers installed. Samsung ADB driver installation via Samsung Kies
Also make sure you have the Jelly Bean SDKs installed by opening Android SDK Manager. If the SDKs for APIs 16 & 17 are not installed you will need to install them.
It should be the same procedure to deploy to a Jellybean phone.
You just have to make sure your phone has USB debugging activated, it's usually found in the "Developer Options" part of the settings, which must be enabled before you can activate USB debugging mode.
If you're not debugging on the device, make sure you set Build Configuration to Release so you get the Xamarin runtimes.
I know I need a mac to deploy but can I at least use my PC to develop the application? It would really help me a lot if I can develop on Windows where I can focus on writing the app.
This answer covers only Xamarin 2.0. Unfortunately I don't know MonoTouch.
Take a look at this statement about Xamarin 2.0:
Xamarin 2.0 bundles the company's Android, iOS and Mac development
tools in a single affordable package aimed at all tiers of developers.
The free Starter edition includes the Xamarin Studio IDE enables
developers to create Android, iOS and Mac apps using C#. However, the
free edition doesn't allow developers to exceed 32k of compiled IL
code and it cannot import or call upon any third-party libraries. The
$299 Indie edition removes this restriction. Things start getting
really interesting for .NET developers with Xamarin Studio's $999
Business edition. This version adds the ability to code iOS
applications within Visual Studio. Yes, you read correctly — code
iOS applications in Visual Studio! Granted, you still need a Mac to
compile and deploy the application to iOS devices (more on that
later), but the fact that you can use a familiar IDE to develop iOS
applications is a game changer.
To make it short: Yes you will need a mac to deploy your application and
yes you can develop on windows using Visual Studio.
Source: http://www.drdobbs.com/tools/xamarin-20-review/240150634
No you don't need the 1 k version to compile on windows. When you want to deploy your app you need to buy it! If u are making a app for windows 8 or whatever you dont need to pay. Monogame is a open source project. For the deployment to the phones your paying to the xamarin project.
"This means that your Xamarin iOS for Visual Studio installation requires a networked Mac OS-X computer to perform these tasks for you. Once configured, Xamarin’s tools will make the process as seamless as possible, but the fact remains that a Mac is required in addition to the Windows computer running Visual Studio."
So still need to hook up my mac and perform all the installations and configurations. Will take time but not a deal breaker I guess.
It is possible to use cloud build services for such a task. One such service worth giving a try is http://ship.io - they offer a free plan to get started.