XamlWatcher is a library that lets you edit the XAML of a WPF app, and have the running instance of the app update each time you save your XAML.
It is designed with MVVM apps in mind and will work with views and resource dictionaries. With a view the content of the view and the bindings will refresh. With resource dictionaries anything using a DynamicResource from the dictionary will update (of course if you are using StaticResource in a view you can edit that first to make it a DynamicResource then edit the resource dictionary.
Install with nuget
>Install-Package XamlWatcher.WPF
Spin up a watcher and point it at the top level of the location of your XAML files. Keep a reference to the watcher around. You probably want to wrap this all in an #if DEBUG
_watcher = new Watcher(Directory.GetParent(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory()).Parent.FullName);
XamlWatcher is internally wrapped in a try/catch so we don't bring your app down if something goes wrong. But you might want to show a toast or something if that happens so the developer knows. In this example Alert.OfException is from the app we are in, it isn't part of XamlWatcher. Just hook into your own app's alert system.
_watcher.OnError = ex => Alert.OfException("XAML Watcher Error", "XAML Watcher update has failed", ex);
You can also hook into the new view after it has been refreshed. You need to do this if you are using Caliburn.Micro's convention based bindings:
_watcher.OnRefreshed = view =>
{
view.SetValue(ViewModelBinder.ConventionsAppliedProperty, false);
ViewModelBinder.Bind(view.DataContext, view, null);
};
#Limitations XamlWatcher won't work at all on views where you have events hooked up in the XAML.
<Button Click="Button_Clicked"/> <!-- XamlWatcher won't work at all if you do this -->
If you're doing cleanish MVVM this shouldn't be too much of a problem.