Xamarin Windows

Goals for this project:

• Provide MSBuild and VS tooling for building, launching, debugging Windows x64 full AOT binaries.
• Provide reusable MSBuild tasks and targets for other platforms which also compile down to full AOT binaries, e.g. Xbox One and PS4.

Build instructions

In order to build this project you'll need:

• Git for Windows
• Visual Studio 2017
• Clang2
• Windows 8.1 SDK and all Windows 10 SDKs You'll find Clang2 and the Windows SDKs in the Visual Studio 2017 setup, under the "Individual components" tab.
• Mono for Windows release

NOTE: Windows has a problem with long (> 260 characters) paths. To avoid any issues related to this limitation when building this project you should make sure to checkout this repository in a shallow path on your system. E.g. to C:\xw:

cd C:\
git clone git@github.com:xamarin/xamarin-windows.git xw
cd xw

Build using build.cmd

To build the project just run the build.cmd script.

Manual build

When developing on this project you may prefer to run the individual steps carried out by build.cmd manually.

For a manual build you will need Cygwin installed. Consult the Compiling Mono on Windows documentation for more details on the prerequisites.

The commands below asumes Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise is installed. This is not required. Adjust the paths to Visual Studio according to the specific flavor of your Visual Studio 2017 installation.

Fetch submodules

cd C:\xw
git submodule update --init --recursive

Build the mono winaot BCL profile

By default a mono checkout is expected in mono/external. Create a Xamarin.Windows.Override.props file in the root of the xamarin-windows checkout with a MonoDevRoot property to override the path to the mono checkout.

NOTE: A specific mono commit is expected to be checked out. Check the MonoCommit property in the Xamarin.Windows.props file.

Run from within cygwin:

cd path/to/mono
git checkout <commit>
./autogen.sh --host=x86_64-w64-mingw32 --disable-boehm --with-runtime_preset=winaot
export MONO_EXECUTABLE="`cygpath -u -a msvc\\\build\\\sgen\\\x64\\\bin\\\Release\\\mono-sgen.exe`"
export VC_ROOT="/cygdrive/c/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio/2017/Enterprise/VC"
export CLANG2_VERSION=$(sed -n 1p "$VC_ROOT/Auxiliary/Build/Microsoft.ClangC2Version.default.txt" | sed 's/\s//g')
export VCTOOLS_VERSION=$(sed -n 1p "$VC_ROOT/Auxiliary/Build/Microsoft.VCToolsVersion.default.txt" | sed 's/\s//g')
export PATH="$VC_ROOT/Tools/ClangC2/$CLANG2_VERSION/bin/HostX64":"$VC_ROOT/Tools/MSVC/$VCTOOLS_VERSION/bin/HostX64/x64":$PATH
/cygdrive/c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Microsoft\ Visual\ Studio/2017/Enterprise/MSBuild/15.0/Bin/MSBuild.exe /p:PlatformToolset=v140 /p:Platform=x64 /p:Configuration=Release /p:MONO_TARGET_GC=sgen msvc/mono.sln
make -C mcs/

Copy reference assemblies to the build folder

The VS extension relies on the Mono BCL to be present in the build/ReferenceAssemblies/ folder. Run the following to copy the relevant files:

cd C:\xw
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\MSBuild\15.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe" msbuild\CopyReferenceAssembliesFromMonoDevRoot.proj

Create the MSBuild toolchain in the build folder

The VS extension relies on the MSBuild files and the mono installation being installed in build/MSBuild/. Run the following to copy the relevant files:

cd C:\xw
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\MSBuild\15.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe" msbuild\CreateToolchain.proj

Build the MSBuild tasks and VS extension

You should now be able to open the Xamarin.Windows.sln solution and build it.

Debugging the VS extension

NOTE! For now, Xamarin needs to be installed in Visual Studio. Make sure to enable that in the Visual Studio setup.

At this time VS extensions with embedded MSBuild files or Reference Assemblies are not properly deployed to the experimental instance. We need to setup symbolic linkes to make sure the VS process correctly loads the MSBuild and Reference Assemblies from the $MSBuild and $ReferenceAssemblies folders located inside the extension folder in the experimental instance folder. The mk-vs-experimental-links.bat script in the root of the source tree creates these links (must be run as Administrator):

cd C:\xw
mk-vs-experimental-links.bat

It should now be possible to debug the extension in VS. NOTE! These links have to be recreated whenever the VS extension's verison number changes. The version number is based on the number of commits so make sure to run the script after new files have been committed or pulled.

Converting an ordinary C# project to a Xamarin.Windows project

Edit the .csproj file to make it a Xamarin.Windows project. The line

<Import Project="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />

must be changed to

<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Xamarin\Windows\Xamarin.Windows.CSharp.targets" />

Then add the line

<ProjectTypeGuids>{8F3E2DF0-C35C-4265-82FC-BEA011F4A7ED};{FAE04EC0-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}</ProjectTypeGuids>

to the first <ProjectGroup> section in the .csproj file.