According to Microsoft, the Visual Studio Code extension .NET MAUI (Multi-Platform App UI) has completed its preview phase and is now available as a production-ready version. The extension, which is designed for cross-platform development of mobile and desktop applications on Windows and macOS, provides support for XAML IntelliSense and XAML Hot Reload for the first time in the current release. In addition, the .NET MAUI Extension for Visual Studio Code is the official successor to Visual Studio for Mac, which Microsoft retired in August 2023 – together with VS Code, the range of functions is now comparable.
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XAML IntelliSense and XAML Hot Reload now also available
While version 17.6 of Visual Studio for Mac will continue to receive support through security and platform updates until the end of August 2024, Microsoft is consistently focusing on the further development of Visual Studio and VS Code – especially with regard to creating cross-platform applications. With the .NET MAUI extension, which is based on the C# Dev Kit and the C# Extension, the code editor should be able to provide all the relevant functions that developers need to be able to build apps for a variety of mobile and desktop devices.
Thanks to XAML IntelliSense, the extension can be used for code completion, among other things – also fully automatically supported by Copilot. It not only provides appropriate tooltips when building UIs, but also makes navigation within the code easier. The hot reload function for XAML enables developers to edit their code while debugging and see the user interface being updated live. While XAML Hot Reload is activated by default, the function for C# is still considered experimental – and is therefore deactivated.
Point of criticism: limited cross-platform support
Like its predecessor Xamarin, which was geared towards cross-platform development, MAUI is also aimed at Windows, macOS (Mac Catalyst: desktop and iPad apps), iOS, Android and Samsung’s Tizen. Microsoft, however, has dispensed with support for Linux since switching to MAUI – which has already led to heated discussions led to.
With the discontinuation of Visual Studio for Mac, the restrictions on Apple platforms are also increasing: Since the MAUI extension requires the C# Dev Kit, switching from Visual Studio for Mac to VS Code still requires a Visual Studio license. According to Dev Class In addition, criticism of the .NET MAUI Extension, now available in version 1.1.6, is growing in general, as is criticism of the C# Dev Kit. A component called WinAppDriver, which is needed, among other things, when testing UIs with the open source tool Appium, is problematic in this context.
WinAppDriver has not been updated for about four years, as a discussion on GitHub shows. The software is currently only available for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016, but not for Windows 11. Microsoft employee Gerald Versluis has responded to the criticism with a detailed instructions on how to use the MAUI extension with Appium reacted and assured in a statementthat the version 1.2.1 of WinAppDriver that he recommended can be used without any problems.
More about the VS Code extension
For more information about the .NET MAUI Extension for Visual Studio Code, see the announcement post in Microsoft Developer Blog.
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