BUG and REGRESSION: Custom NavigationViewItem crashes app at startup

[knightmeister]

Describe the bug

Firstly, I have spent considerable time investigating this and pinpointing the cause of this issue. Please don't arbitrarily close this without investigating it.

Between WASDK 1.1.5 and 1.2.221109.1 there is a regression that crashes my app at startup. My NavigationView uses custom NavigationViewItems (called HomeMenuItem). Setting the NavigationView property SelectedItem to this at startup will cause the app to crash with a nonsensical error Value does not fall within the expected range. in everybodies favourite useless block of code:

#if DEBUG && !DISABLE_XAML_GENERATED_BREAK_ON_UNHANDLED_EXCEPTION
            UnhandledException += (sender, e) =>
            {
                if (global::System.Diagnostics.Debugger.IsAttached) global::System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break();
            };
#endif

Interestingly, if the ctor assignment of SelectedItem is commented and it's done later (i.e. via a button), it works.

To further elucidate on the cause, overriding the HomeMenuItem template (i.e. by setting Content="Hello") in the XAML stops this bug.

The fact that this behaviour occurs during startup is also interesting but works once the app is displayed. It's also clearly a regression given it works in 1.1.5 and earlier (code has been in place since before WASDK).

Please reach out if you need anything further :)

Steps to reproduce the bug

Github repro available here: https://github.com/knightmeister/WinUiNavViewCooked

Change the Nuget WASDK version to 1.1.5 and observe it works. Anything after that (including the latest) does not work.

Expected behavior

App does not crash when using custom NavigationViewItem.

Screenshots

No response

NuGet package version

WinUI 3 - Windows App SDK 1.4.0: 1.4.230822000

Windows version

Windows 11 (22H2): Build 22621

Additional context

No response

[knightmeister]

@llongley any idea what release this will make it into?

[codendone]

@knightmeister The fix will be in 1.5.