ILSpy available for Linux, Mac and Windows

[christophwille]

Today, we merged #3755, and if you scroll to the bottom of the PR, you can see a few screenshots. Do note that as pointed out, prebuilt binaries only exist for Windows at the moment. If you want to give the current bits a try on Mac and Linux, please see https://github.com/icsharpcode/ILSpy#unix--mac on how to build it yourself.

We are preparing a meetup talk (that will be recorded) on all the details how & why we chose Avalonia, how the porting was done with the help of LLMs (pitfalls, learnings, best practices), plus then on top things that we haven't done yet - shipping binaries on different platforms. With that out of the way, the super-short version of what happened and why:

Meet users where they are (going)

That was the main motivation for tackling the crossplatform challenges in the first place. Why is that so you ask? Mac and Linux are way better places for running coding agents, and one thing will make Mac a 1st class platform going forward: local LLMs on the modern Mx processors. So we want to meet our users where they will be. That also goes for us, the core team members: Windows really sucks at the moment, and all the AI enshittification doesn't help (an OS should first and foremost protect data, not be a conveyor into a data furnace - Hello, Android 17!)

We expect there to be quite a few "dark corners" where there will be subtle bugs, so please: take the v10 WPF version and try your workflows in the new v11 UI. Missing shortcuts, gestures, UI glitches, anything really - please create an issue. To make sure we can easily discern it, start the the title of the issue with "V11: ". Thank you!

[lextm]

Congrats on closing the loop.

BTW, Mac will remain a feasible platform to run local LLMs, but Windows ARM64 on Nvidia latest chipsets might easily surpass it later this year with the new product lines from a variety of the vendors.

[christophwille]

Thankfully we all will see how this pans out, however, past results of Nvidia workstations for inference weren't really that impressive. And unless Microsoft pulls off dynamic unified memory, Windows is simply not a viable competition.

[lextm]

Issues like #3760 and #3759 really raise concerns from me.

When I did Project Rover, the goal was to ensure a smooth transition from WPF to elsewhere, so things can migrate gradually and reach a turning point only when the new bits are compatible and ready to roll.

Now #3755 is just a rush, that broke too many things in one shot, and you force end users to report (since you didn't have enough automation test cases to cover).

Not sure whether it is worth the while to continue on this break/fix cycle in the coming weeks/months, and it doesn't seem to be a great journey for v11 early adopters.

I have ported AvalonEdit and AvalonDock to Uno Platform and a small portion of WPF DataGrid too. So, I won't mind reshaping Project Rover some time this summer to be "ILSpy on Uno". And this time it can literally reuse most of ILSpy code base, as the major controls are fully ported and of the exact same API surface. But it is likely to be shipped as part of the revived SharpDevelop/MonoDevelop project on Uno, not necessarily a standalone tool.

[christophwille]

A major rewrite always causes friction, and we had settings issues in the (distant) past as well. That was expected to happen, and we are still waaays from a preview1 release. Guess why we are asking for early feedback, and that is why we didn't do any big announcements.

Specifically of note regarding Rover: the *.wpf.cs have been backed out. Just so you know up front.