4 ms·

.NET Core 3 and Support for Windows Desktop Applications

66 points by runesoerensen 8y ago

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
This is really where I've been waiting for .NET to reach. There's been a huge amount of fragmentation in the .NET space, and until Core was able to handle existing Windows applications, it wasn't really done. I'd still really like a desktop UI flavor of some sort to make it into cross-platform .NET, mind you. Let me run my desktop apps on a Linux machine.
- deft 8y ago
  Xamarin for linux is coming, so truly crossplatform .NET should be a future possibility.
  - pknopf 8y ago
    What "Xamarin" specificly? Just the IDE? Or Xamarin Forms?
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Xamarin.Forms, with release 3.0.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    I'll have to look into that. I have a WinForms app I'd love to run on a Linux machine. (Or more specifically, one of my Windows machines I run it on I'd rather be running Linux.) I have to have a UI, but the UI is not sophisticated, and could likely be migrated to another UI framework without too much pain. Although... Xamarin still doesn't play nice with VB does it? Fun: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/cross-platform/platform/visual-basic/xamarin-forms https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/cross-platform/plat...
    - deft 8y ago
      Xamarin for WPF is also coming which should allow you to keep your VB code unchanged, I don't know the specifics however.
mmgutz 8y ago
I don't get it more and more Windows specific features are creeping into .NET Core. Wasn't there already desktop applications support in regular .NET? Very confusing. What is the cross platform .NET?
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  The main issue is that there is currently .NET Core (used mostly by web applications) and .NET Framework (used mostly by Windows applications), and many things that can be done in both have to be done in slightly different ways. Sometimes I'll look up how to do something in .NET, and find a reference that doesn't work in my app... because it's only there in Core, for example. .NET Standard was the first big step, I think, in starting to clean this up: Making a clear measure of what you could expect to be common to all flavors of .NET. The goal here, I think, is to inevitably ensure regardless of platform you're targeting or format your application is used in, it can rely on the same .NET as every other. Whereas .NET Framework was a Windows-based design where the OS was an assumption, .NET Core is moving to add Windows-specific capabilities as an add-on.
  - euyyn 8y ago
    The fact that something called Core wasn't the part that's common to all flavors is a big sin.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Yep, that is a side effect of rebuild the world with UWP and what ASP.NET team was doing (.NET Core 1.0) before acknowledging that it wasn't actually flying, now it is taking them a couple of years to steer the ship back on track, while trying to gain the confidence of developers with 15 years of development investment in .NET Framework.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  .NET Core is like libc and is targeted by .NET Standard. The problem is that the majority of .NET developers aren't moving away from .NET Framework unless we can take our tooling with us. Lack of GUI tooling, missing 1:1 feature parity with EF 6, DB drivers are holding many back.
tomc1985 8y ago
So WPF/XAML's back?
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  That's not what they said which is a shame.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  XAML never went away. WPF is still pretty much alive in applications that need to target Windows 7 and lower.
pknopf 8y ago
I really wish they would figure out of cross platform solution for desktop applications. I know their are libraries out there now, but Microsoft should really help with the effort. Maybe Xamarin.Forms? Idk. Regardless, I'm working on a way to build Qt/Qmp apps with .NET Core. https://github.com/pauldotknopf/net-core-qml https://github.com/pauldotknopf/net-core-qml
- prplhaz4 8y ago
  There has been active public development on ReactXP [1] for months now. It supposedly works with React-Native and React-Native-[Windows|macos]. Considering the amount of work being done in public on React-Native-Windows [2], it looks like this is turning into one of their (intended or not) version of cross-platform (using web technologies) dev stack. [1] https://github.com/Microsoft/reactxp https://github.com/Microsoft/reactxp [2] https://github.com/Microsoft/react-native-windows https://github.com/Microsoft/react-native-windows
- hungerstrike 8y ago
  Silverlight worked (on Mac and Windows).
  - vetinari 8y ago
    Crossplatform does NOT mean Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox. Silverlight or Moonlight never worked for me on Linux desktop.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox do not use exactly the same OS, or expected set always present hardware, thus they are by definition not the same platform. Cross platform does not mean it works in all OS ever written.
    - hungerstrike 8y ago
      It worked fine on Mac so I presume that much of the work was done to make it work on other UNIX systems.
merb 8y ago
I don't get why they don't use Xamarin.Forms as a Foundation to power it... So much wasted development effort. They are building Xamarin.Forms AND this new Windows Desktop Application stuff.

66 points by runesoerensen 8y ago

This is really where I've been waiting for .NET to reach. There's been a huge amount of fragmentation in the .NET space, and until Core was able to handle existing Windows applications, it wasn't really done. I'd still really like a desktop UI flavor of some sort to make it into cross-platform .NET, mind you. Let me run my desktop apps on a Linux machine.

deft 8y ago
Xamarin for linux is coming, so truly crossplatform .NET should be a future possibility.
- pknopf 8y ago
  What "Xamarin" specificly? Just the IDE? Or Xamarin Forms?
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Xamarin.Forms, with release 3.0.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  I'll have to look into that. I have a WinForms app I'd love to run on a Linux machine. (Or more specifically, one of my Windows machines I run it on I'd rather be running Linux.) I have to have a UI, but the UI is not sophisticated, and could likely be migrated to another UI framework without too much pain. Although... Xamarin still doesn't play nice with VB does it? Fun: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/cross-platform/platform/visual-basic/xamarin-forms https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/cross-platform/plat...
  - deft 8y ago
    Xamarin for WPF is also coming which should allow you to keep your VB code unchanged, I don't know the specifics however.

mmgutz 8y ago

I don't get it more and more Windows specific features are creeping into .NET Core. Wasn't there already desktop applications support in regular .NET? Very confusing. What is the cross platform .NET?

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
The main issue is that there is currently .NET Core (used mostly by web applications) and .NET Framework (used mostly by Windows applications), and many things that can be done in both have to be done in slightly different ways. Sometimes I'll look up how to do something in .NET, and find a reference that doesn't work in my app... because it's only there in Core, for example. .NET Standard was the first big step, I think, in starting to clean this up: Making a clear measure of what you could expect to be common to all flavors of .NET. The goal here, I think, is to inevitably ensure regardless of platform you're targeting or format your application is used in, it can rely on the same .NET as every other. Whereas .NET Framework was a Windows-based design where the OS was an assumption, .NET Core is moving to add Windows-specific capabilities as an add-on.
- euyyn 8y ago
  The fact that something called Core wasn't the part that's common to all flavors is a big sin.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Yep, that is a side effect of rebuild the world with UWP and what ASP.NET team was doing (.NET Core 1.0) before acknowledging that it wasn't actually flying, now it is taking them a couple of years to steer the ship back on track, while trying to gain the confidence of developers with 15 years of development investment in .NET Framework.
pjmlp 8y ago
.NET Core is like libc and is targeted by .NET Standard. The problem is that the majority of .NET developers aren't moving away from .NET Framework unless we can take our tooling with us. Lack of GUI tooling, missing 1:1 feature parity with EF 6, DB drivers are holding many back.

tomc1985 8y ago

So WPF/XAML's back?

tonyedgecombe 8y ago
That's not what they said which is a shame.
pjmlp 8y ago
XAML never went away. WPF is still pretty much alive in applications that need to target Windows 7 and lower.

pknopf 8y ago

I really wish they would figure out of cross platform solution for desktop applications. I know their are libraries out there now, but Microsoft should really help with the effort. Maybe Xamarin.Forms? Idk. Regardless, I'm working on a way to build Qt/Qmp apps with .NET Core. https://github.com/pauldotknopf/net-core-qml https://github.com/pauldotknopf/net-core-qml

prplhaz4 8y ago
There has been active public development on ReactXP [1] for months now. It supposedly works with React-Native and React-Native-[Windows|macos]. Considering the amount of work being done in public on React-Native-Windows [2], it looks like this is turning into one of their (intended or not) version of cross-platform (using web technologies) dev stack. [1] https://github.com/Microsoft/reactxp https://github.com/Microsoft/reactxp [2] https://github.com/Microsoft/react-native-windows https://github.com/Microsoft/react-native-windows
hungerstrike 8y ago
Silverlight worked (on Mac and Windows).
- vetinari 8y ago
  Crossplatform does NOT mean Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox. Silverlight or Moonlight never worked for me on Linux desktop.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox do not use exactly the same OS, or expected set always present hardware, thus they are by definition not the same platform. Cross platform does not mean it works in all OS ever written.
  - hungerstrike 8y ago
    It worked fine on Mac so I presume that much of the work was done to make it work on other UNIX systems.

merb 8y ago

I don't get why they don't use Xamarin.Forms as a Foundation to power it... So much wasted development effort. They are building Xamarin.Forms AND this new Windows Desktop Application stuff.