[Question] Xamarin.Forms end of life?

[Tommigun1980]

Hi.

I can't help but notice that there hasn't really been any commits to Xamarin.Forms for the last few months.
I understand that .NET MAUI is being worked on but let's be honest, it won't release for a good while and once it releases it will take at least a year before existing applications can even think about migrating to it. So MAUI is at least two years away for us developers.

Will Xamarin.Forms be updated during these years, or should Xamarin.Forms be deemed end-of-life as of now?

https://github.com/xamarin/Xamarin.Forms/wiki/Feature-Roadmap says Xamarin.Forms 5 will be supported until November 2022. Is this still the case, or has Xamarin.Forms been abandoned prematurely in favour of .NET MAUI? If so then a realistic scenario is that any live applications, or applications currently in development for Xamarin.Forms, will need to be rewritten with a completely different SDK as developers can't just close shop for a few years. These applications will almost certainly not return to MAUI.

If nothing else, could the existing pull requests be merged? There's a ton of fixes there that people have been waiting for for a long time. Just take a week off from developing MAUI to merge them, or please update the roadmap to reflect that development has fully shifted to MAUI, and that the 2 year support commitment no longer holds.

Thank you so much for informing us on the roadmap and Xamarin.Forms support commitment!

[giuseppenovielli]

#13997

[Tommigun1980]

I am a bit disappointed in the fact that the 2-year support commitment doesn't seem to hold.
It is not something that can just be glossed over as the support commitment is very much a deciding factor when selecting a technology. If developers are hung out to dry it is certain that they won't return for any other initiatives from Microsoft.

MAUI may be the future of Xamarin.Forms but it is very much a distant future for us developers. It will take years before the technology is mature enough to use, before all libraries we are dependent on have been ported (if ever), and it just doesn't make sense for a lot of us to completely revamp our applications. We don't pick a technology because it's cool, what we need is longevity, so we can keep on pursuing whatever our business goals are.

This is the reason that the support commitment must hold and it is unprecedented for a large corporation not to uphold it.
I beg you guys to keep on supporting Xamarin.Forms as it will kill a lot of businesses if you don't.

Thank you again, and eagerly awaiting an update on this.

[davidaramantSEP]

I have to agree; I am very unhappy with the support situation. My team is stuck on Forms 4.8 because of multiple crashing issues with XF5 that we cannot work around. It's not like the version we are on is a panacea either; CollectionView in particular is a mess (a control which we used because Microsoft said it was The New Way). I am really scared we are going to run into something where we need something from a later package version because we would be totally hosed.

[davidortinau]

Will Xamarin.Forms be updated during these years, or should Xamarin.Forms be deemed end-of-life as of now?

Xamarin.Forms will receive critical updates through November 2022, a year after its successor .NET MAUI releases.

https://dotnet.microsoft.com/platform/support/policy/xamarin

If nothing else, could the existing pull requests be merged?

Which PRs are a priority for you? I'll discuss with the team and see what we can do to get another service release out soon.

It will take years before the technology is mature enough to use, before all libraries we are dependent on have been ported (if ever),

.NET MAUI is Xamarin.Forms vNext in this context. What time frame for transitioning would be comfortable for you? What would you expect to happen in Xamarin.Forms when iOS 15, 16, 17 ships?

[developer9969]

@davidortinau hi David is good that you reply ,XF at the moment is very unstable especially the collection view!!!
We updated to xf5 but we had no end problems with the collection view with resizing,grouping etc... in quite few places we had to replace it with bindable layout. Every upgrade is a worry of what might be broken... you need a bigger team Microsoft has to invest more in mobile.please sort the collection view as after the grid is the most important control.

[Tommigun1980]

Thank you for the answer @davidortinau.

Which PRs are a priority for you? I'll discuss with the team and see what we can do to get another service release out soon.

If I compile a list, will it actually be worth my time, and where do you want the list to be sent? I don't want to clutter this ticket.

On a high level there's a lot of pull requests that haven't been merged that fix bugs with the SwipeView and fix memory leaks.
The CollectionView requires a lot of fixes for which there are no pull requests yet. The component is not usable and we can not live two years without fixes to it.

.NET MAUI is Xamarin.Forms vNext in this context. What time frame for transitioning would be comfortable for you?

It will take over half a year before it's released, and then at least a year or two before it's stable enough to use in production. Libraries will also take a year or two before they are updated, so I don't think it's possible to transition to it at least for two years, one year at an absolute minimum.

What would you expect to happen in Xamarin.Forms when iOS 15, 16, 17 ships?

I would absolutely expect Xamarin.Forms be updated to support whatever OS releases are shipped during its support period. So until November 2022 Xamarin.Forms has to support any new iOS and Android versions. This is how any technology I have ever used has been supported, as supporting the most recent operating systems is the epitome or "critical fixes". If the developers can't release their app on the various app stores then the underlying technology is not supported.

Thank you.

[davidaramantSEP]

I too would expect that Xamarin Forms works with iOS 15. Obviously I would not expect any brand new cross-platform APIs, but Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android better support new versions.

By saying that Xamarin Forms 5 was the last major release with no new significant functionality, you've set the expectation that this is supposed to be a really solid release. That has certainly not been my impression of XF5.

I really hope Maui will be a straight-forward upgrade but I'm not counting on that. The reality is that the upgrade will take money & time. Even if it's a perfect framework from day one, some companies will have to defer the upgrade for budgetary reasons.

[Depechie]

@davidortinau in ref to what PR's we are waiting for: #13166 ( been ready for review since January )

( sorry @Tommigun1980 for cluttering the ticket... just wanted to state we are indeed waiting for some PR's )

[BlueRaja]

I mean, there's two hundred open PRs, most of which are from the past year but have not even been reviewed yet.

So a good start would be to have someone go through those and merge/close/request changes. There must be a ton of low-hanging fruit there.

[inimirpaz]

Not to mention the 28+ days worth of "unverified" issues opened lately. What kind of support can we expect for XF 5 till Nov 2022? Major crash issues only or minor (eg layout/rendering issues) as well?

[davidortinau]

@Tommigun1980 you can email me david.ortinau@microsoft.com. I will review them with the team and prioritize those that meet the bar for a service release (regressions, critical blockers, high impact, etc.).

Xamarin.Android, Xamarin.iOS, and Xamarin.Forms will bump to new versions of Android and iOS until vNext is released, which in this case is .NET 6 in November 2021. From that point, new OS bumps will be via .NET 6+. This is a continuation of the same policy we've had for years: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/platform/support/policy/xamarin

@inimirpaz critical issues is the bar for what we are addressing right now.

Issues below that bar will be prioritized for fixing in .NET MAUI.

Any PRs open that don't make it into Xamarin.Forms will be asked to move and retarget to .NET MAUI.

We are all in an important transition to being a unified part of .NET that will pay off in the near future. Please continue to raise specific issues to me and I'll do my best to prioritize them and guide resolution while we have a narrow focus on what we do in the Xamarin.Forms repository right now.

[davidaramantSEP]

What defines "critical? "

[developer9969]

There are 269 open Collection View issues and some of them are critical to us, Grouping- Resizing- Spacing- Empty view
you would agree that the collection view is an extremely important component and I am sure many people would appreciate if you could go through those and fix some critical ones,

Also @Tommigun1980 did raise quite a few collectionView issues at the time , and that allowed us to avoid the control
Shall we revert to ListView?

[AlleSchonWeg]

If the Xamarin/Maui Team fixes issues here, these issues will not appear in maui. So win win.

[AlleSchonWeg]

When can we expect a new Service Release? I see only team members putting/removing labels on issues...

[MagicAndre1981]

What defines "critical? "

this is the point. According to 80/20 rule, 80% of devs use only 20% of the XF framework, so all have different critical issues which hurt them. Microsoft doesn't use XF for their inbox Windows and cross platform apps like outlook, mobile office, so they don't know what developers need.

[Huaba93]

@MagicAndre1981 I agree with you 100%. Microsoft needs to use Xamarin/MAUI for their own products. That's what Google is doing with Flutter. That's the only way to build a great Framework.

[MagicAndre1981]

@MagicAndre1981 I agree with you 100%. Microsoft needs to use Xamarin/MAUI for their own products.

yes, this is the point. Here Microsoft would detect the same issues like we during coding and would fix them much faster

[davidaramantSEP]

When can we expect a new Service Release? I see only team members putting/removing labels on issues...

I think this is the most pressing question. Saying that XF5 is supported until November 2022 doesn't mean much if there's never any new service releases. Right now it appears to be completely abandoned.

[jfversluis]

We should have clarified under those labels what is meant. I think it's rather useless to do that retroactively. Since there was obviously no clear definition, different people might have used the label differently and thus the results will be no reflection of the truth.

The SR4 board is open because that one dates from before I (re)joined the team and I still wanted to evaluate what is on there and move things over to the current board. In fact, let me make that a priority today and close it, so that won't cause any more confusion.

As stated in this issue: I will create a project board per Service Release, and that is what is "on the list". Besides what was already deemed important in earlier releases, I have added all the issues that are listed in this issue and we have a special focus on Shell and CollectionView as we feel that is what a lot of people are using and running into blockers. In addition, we have a lot of "low hanging fruit" in the form of PRs that are already open, so we're evaluating what we can salvage from that and merge it.

How the projects are managed; I move everything that is not in the Done column to the next project, until, ideally, all columns are empty. The ones that stay in Done, we can see what was done for that SR, the other issues can be understood as: on our list/todo.

Feel free to highlight any issues that might be missing according to you and we'll see what we can do about them. Or, even better, in the spirit of Hacktoberfest, feel free to help out so there is a better chance of getting things fixed that are important to you!

[jfversluis]

Note: I'm not claiming to have exclusive right to the truth here. I wish it was as simple as filtering the list and just starting from the top, but unfortunately it's not, as hopefully I can make clear with what I'm writing here. I am trying to be as transparent and open as I can because I love to work with (all of) you to make your experience the best we can. I hope you won't conceive it as rejecting any idea that is not mine, that is absolutely not what I'm trying to do ☺️

With just the people assigned to this we're doing the best we can and everything we can (just have a look at all the PRs that Javier has put out in a short time!). Help is more than welcome in any shape or form. Either point out issues that are important to you, issues that are not relevant anymore so I can close them or anything else. I'm hoping to do this together and make our final ride into the Xamarin.Forms sunset the most pleasant one for everyone.

[tranb3r]

Here is a list of the issues I'd like to be fixed, that are not already in the board: #9839 #14154 #3054 #3855 #11593
Thank you @jfversluis and keep up the good work !!

[jfversluis]

Awesome, thank you @tranb3r! I'll go through them and see what we can do :)

[AndyDentFree]

an issue with interns reviewing issues is that they don't know the product at all, and so will create more churn

There are a bunch of logistics with 3K issues. At the very least, it's grunt work to determine if they include a reproducible case.

Another thing that can help - have someone follow up with the original poster of issues to verify if they have quietly solved the issue and not bothered updating it. The model assumes people are actively monitoring issues but a gentle nudge for folk who haven't been on there might get useful responses - it is the kind of thing you hand over to a Virtual Assistant.

It's all about factoring out the tasks required to do triage and getting as many of them done by others outside the team. Github.

[somoreingold]

Thanks for listening to us @jfversluis . For me, it just seems that label auto height has been fundamentally broken in Xamarin, even in v5. There are several variations of this problem reported. Not being able to fully see text in one of the most basic controls (a label), has been a bit discouraging to have to explain over the past couple of years.

#3754
#4950
#13683
#11270
#13448
#10077
#11713

[jfversluis]

Hey @somoreingold I can totally understand! I will have a look at those and see what we can do.

[jfversluis]

Hey everyone! Just to update this thread, another SR has been released with a good number of fixes. We've been making good progress with a good number of fixes that are going in and the monthly releases.

I realize there are still some issues I need to gather from the last few comments here and put them on a board, no worries, I got that on my radar. I'm not sure how much sense it makes to keep this thread going much longer, I hope we've established some form of trusts and you appreciate what we're trying to do here :)

If there is any concern feel free to reach out either publicly for transparency or privately if you prefer that. For now I will leave this open, but I might close it in the near future. If there are any other questions or comments, let me know!

[MitchBomcanhao]

@jfversluis there's been clear progress recently - we're roughly back where we should have been a few months ago (when things were quite stale). I know we're not getting any new exciting things but that's not what we need. We need it to work, and issues addressed :)

I do have a question regarding release plans. How bad would a reported issue have to be to make you consider doing a point release with a single fix for said issue, outside of the current monthly release?
for example, this latest service release essentially broke our UWP app - there was a handy workaround provided by the person reporting the issue, but sometimes such workarounds are not possible.

[jfversluis]

@MitchBomcanhao it has to be pretty bad. I don't see the issue to be honest. If it breaks so bad, why not stay on the last version that worked while we work out the rest of the issues with what you're facing and upgrade whenever everything you're using works fine?

It's not like there is only 1 version available. We're releasing monthly now, the wait shouldn't be too long. The issue you are talking about it fixed, with your help so big thanks for that! And will be available around Nov 10th. I understand that's maybe not what you want to hear, but I also see our point of view where we can't release something new because this 1 bug is fixed. At that rate we would release daily or multiple times a day and I don't think that's what people would prefer as well.

Am I wrong to say that you should then just rollback to the previous version that worked for you, or am I missing something?

[MitchBomcanhao]

@jfversluis we've been waiting for a service release that worked for us, and it has been a while since we've had some new release that didn't introduce some new issue for us. I've had to try various updates and figugre out possible workarounds, and after a while you start wondering "what will it be on the next release".

I'm sure you know that sometimes nasty bugs can be introduced and not found before stuff gets to production, and we might not be able to go back to a previous service release without running into the same issues we've been trying to avoid up until now...

Don't take me wrong, I don't want to sound ungrateful. Things are progressing and we will get there in the end.
We're still working towards incorporating xf5 (stuck on 4.8 for a long time) and I can't wait to get my hands on the next SR and have it be "the one".

[jfversluis]

Gotcha! Just trying to understand your situation here. Sorry to hear you're in this state and like you already mentioned, I'm trying the best I can here to get things moving and get it in a state that works for everyone. I totally understand that you want that rather yesterday than tomorrow. The only thing I can ask, which is a big ask, is to hang on a little longer and work with us like you've already wonderfully done trying out or fixes. If you have the bandwidth to do so, turn those workarounds and bug fixes into something we can incorporate in the code in order to fix things (faster).

The way you put it it's also not going to help if I put releases out faster, or well, you can have faster test cycles, but if the version is still not "the one", what I'm doing then is burdening a lot of people with new updates all the time while I'm not even maybe helping you :)

While typing this, you can have faster cycles, nightly builds are produces each night with the latest changes. If you try those you should be able to adequately determine if the upcoming version is the right one for you?

Maybe if you want to discuss further for possible solutions it's better to take it offline :) not to make this less transparent, I think it's important that people read about our considerations with this, but I feel at this point we might get into your specific situation and how we can make that better which might not be relevant to everyone here.

[greg84]

Is it possible to increase the priority of CarouselView related issues? There are a number of them, but #8640 in particular seems to make it unusable.

[angelru]

I think this is important:
#10085
#13459
#13993

[djhango]

Would like to see #9520 get some love, unable to use CollectionViews with DataTemplates that use GridColumns due to this, currently using BindableLayout as a workaround

[jfversluis]

Thanks for the new suggestions everyone!

[zzyzy]

Would appreciate if the following could be fixed :)
#13597

[yunusefendi52]

Also CollectionView related issue that I am having #14522

[YiannisBourkelis]

Regarding CollectionView implementation, there is one more very important feature that is missing: view (or scroll indicator) inset when the keyboard appears. Here is the related issue on the matter: #9691 . Should be also implemented for the TableView.

[jfversluis]

Hey everyone! In case you missed it, we just released Service Release 7 a few days ago. I see the communication is slowing down here and as much as I enjoy being in direct contact with you, I will close this for now so we keep a good overview of things. I hope with all that we've been doing that we have restored a bit of faith on your part that at least things are moving. Probably, in some cases, not as fast as you had hoped, but we'll get there.

I will keep creating project boards for each release so you can see what we're looking at. Feel free to ping me in any issue that you want to bring to my attention and I'll try to get back to you asap. My email is also open and maybe you want to join the Discord server if you want to discuss something.

Again, thank you all so much for your patience and also the collaboration! You have all been very helpful pointing out important issues, verifying fixes and more. Let's keep in touch! <3