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VS 2022 WinForms designer for .NET 3.0+ can still not handle non-MS custom controls. If you want to create a user control yourself you need to sign an NDA with

by foepys 5y ago

VS 2022 WinForms designer for .NET 3.0+ can still not handle non-MS custom controls. If you want to create a user control yourself you need to sign an NDA with MS. The API and behavior also changed, so it's not like updating the SDK version is enough. You need to fix every single form and control. MS didn't botch the transition completely but it's very far from being a small task for larger applications maintained by relatively small teams.

electroly 5y ago
> You need to fix every single form and control. As anecdotal evidence, I certainly did not do this in my migration of several WinForms apps (one large and several small) to .NET 6. They flubbed the default font in .NET 5 so WinForms users had to wait a bit longer, but it's fixed in .NET 6. My forms all work fine in .NET 6 without change. It would have been infeasible to revisit all of the forms. Do you have specific examples of APIs that changed? I can't think of any. I think changing the WinForms API would have taken a lot more effort than they actually invested to get it running on .NET Core. From where I'm sitting, it seems like they did the minimum necessary to get the existing DLL to run, and then spent 95% of their budget on the out-of-process designer rewrite. Edit: I thought of one. They removed Menu; now there is only MenuStrip. I did have to make code changes for this and I totally forgot about it. It was minor though; we used MenuStrip anyway, there was just some code with optional support for Menu that I removed.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  They did reference in several occasions that the likes of Telerik, ComponentOne, DevExpress,... had to jump in to enable such transition. So I assume you aren't using such component libraries.
  - electroly 5y ago
    Yeah, that's correct; we only use the built-in controls and our own controls. Perhaps we don't use the functionality that was changed. I just edited my post above because I remembered I did have a breakage related to the removal of the Menu class.
- foepys 5y ago
  You cannot create your own controls. It's impossible to integrate them with the VS designer unless you sign an NDA. I don't mean a composition of existing controls but completely new custom controls. Yes, you can continue developing in code but nobody will develop winforms without a designer. Once you use a custom control in the control/form you will not be able to use the designer again until you remove the custom control. That is simply not acceptable for many developers. There is much more low-level stuff like background behavior, event order and more which most developers simply don't notice, especially when only using Microsoft's controls.
  - electroly 5y ago
    I don't understand what you mean; we have tons of custom controls. I am looking at a .NET 6 project right now where I have a custom control that shows up in the toolbox under my project's group, and when you add it to the designer it renders (at design time) as it did before. It's clearly my OnPaint method drawing, etc. I wonder if you're talking about a previous version of .NET Core? .NET 6, very recently released, is the first version where legacy WinForms apps can start to upgrade. There were blockers in previous .NET Core versions. If you're maybe talking about .NET Core 3.1, WinForms was not at all ready in that version. It was almost there in .NET 5 but they made a mistake with the default font handling that broke legacy apps, but they both fixed that bug and finished the designer for .NET 6.
zmj 5y ago
The designer isn't the runtime. Custom controls work fine in the application; it's the click-and-drag builder in Visual Studio that doesn't work. I don't miss it.

by foepys 5y ago

electroly 5y ago

> You need to fix every single form and control. As anecdotal evidence, I certainly did not do this in my migration of several WinForms apps (one large and several small) to .NET 6. They flubbed the default font in .NET 5 so WinForms users had to wait a bit longer, but it's fixed in .NET 6. My forms all work fine in .NET 6 without change. It would have been infeasible to revisit all of the forms. Do you have specific examples of APIs that changed? I can't think of any. I think changing the WinForms API would have taken a lot more effort than they actually invested to get it running on .NET Core. From where I'm sitting, it seems like they did the minimum necessary to get the existing DLL to run, and then spent 95% of their budget on the out-of-process designer rewrite. Edit: I thought of one. They removed Menu; now there is only MenuStrip. I did have to make code changes for this and I totally forgot about it. It was minor though; we used MenuStrip anyway, there was just some code with optional support for Menu that I removed.

pjmlp 5y ago
They did reference in several occasions that the likes of Telerik, ComponentOne, DevExpress,... had to jump in to enable such transition. So I assume you aren't using such component libraries.
- electroly 5y ago
  Yeah, that's correct; we only use the built-in controls and our own controls. Perhaps we don't use the functionality that was changed. I just edited my post above because I remembered I did have a breakage related to the removal of the Menu class.
foepys 5y ago
You cannot create your own controls. It's impossible to integrate them with the VS designer unless you sign an NDA. I don't mean a composition of existing controls but completely new custom controls. Yes, you can continue developing in code but nobody will develop winforms without a designer. Once you use a custom control in the control/form you will not be able to use the designer again until you remove the custom control. That is simply not acceptable for many developers. There is much more low-level stuff like background behavior, event order and more which most developers simply don't notice, especially when only using Microsoft's controls.
- electroly 5y ago
  I don't understand what you mean; we have tons of custom controls. I am looking at a .NET 6 project right now where I have a custom control that shows up in the toolbox under my project's group, and when you add it to the designer it renders (at design time) as it did before. It's clearly my OnPaint method drawing, etc. I wonder if you're talking about a previous version of .NET Core? .NET 6, very recently released, is the first version where legacy WinForms apps can start to upgrade. There were blockers in previous .NET Core versions. If you're maybe talking about .NET Core 3.1, WinForms was not at all ready in that version. It was almost there in .NET 5 but they made a mistake with the default font handling that broke legacy apps, but they both fixed that bug and finished the designer for .NET 6.

zmj 5y ago

The designer isn't the runtime. Custom controls work fine in the application; it's the click-and-drag builder in Visual Studio that doesn't work. I don't miss it.