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Great article, we have a similar story but only used Xamarin for 1 iOS app. If I had option to go back I would not chose Xa marin, we would have used native. Ma

by forcer 12y ago

Great article, we have a similar story but only used Xamarin for 1 iOS app. If I had option to go back I would not chose Xa marin, we would have used native. Main reason being that we now need to add 3 SDKs to our app and none of them are supported in Xamarin, it seems it will be cheaper and more predictable to rewrite to native than implementing SDKs. Porting libraries to Xamarin is possible in theory but in practice major effort and hard to do without access to library code.

badlogic 12y ago
I think this is the key to making a great cross-platform solution. Pretty much any mobile app that's not a toy relies on native 3rd party sdks, be it ad providers or fancy Ui compinents. Whatever platform first solves the issue of making integration of pods on iOs or AARs on Android a smooth process, will win. I don't see any options that come close to solving this. Xamarin is not native to either iOS or Android. RoboVM (the one i work on) can cheat, as we only need to solve it for iOS, Android comes for free. React Native has no clear path for accessing 3rd party libs at all yet. Whatever they can come up with will be further complicated by the fact that the JS engine is single threaded.
- peterhunt 12y ago
  What? http://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/nativemodulesios.html#content http://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/nativemodulesios...
  - badlogic 12y ago
    I stand corrected, I must have overlooked that section. Callbacks (used to pass return values) are still experimental though, and it's unclear how this will port over to Android once that backend works.
ianlevesque 12y ago
Bindings are actually not that bad with Objective Sharpie. What SDKs are giving you trouble? I would agree that for a single platform it is not worthwhile though.
deet 12y ago
My experience with third party libraries has been quite different, for the most part. I've often been surprised at how easy it is to create bindings to libraries written in Obj-C even if no one else has before. Usually it requires extracting the compiled library from the framework, and then translating each declaration from the library's header into the C# binding definition. In many cases it's a couple of hours work (or less). That said, libraries that are provided as source files, with the instructions "just copy them into your project," can be incredibly frustrating. Our designer would love to use github.com/MengTo/Spring but I have yet to find a way to use it in Xamarin easily.
natfriedman 12y ago
Hi there, I'm the CEO of Xamarin. I'm really sorry to hear that you had issues with consuming third-party libraries. This is actually something we've been recently very focused on improving. First of all, in December we released a new tool called Objective Sharpie that can automatically bind Objective-C libraries into C#: http://forums.xamarin.com/categories/ObjectiveSharpie http://forums.xamarin.com/categories/ObjectiveSharpie If you're skilled enough to build the Objective-C library, then you'll be able to use Objective Sharpie to create a C# binding. We also have docs on doing this for Java on developer.xamarin.com. Some of our customers don't have the time or skill to do this themselves, and so we've recently created a bindings team that wraps third-party native libraries for our customers. Many of these end up published on http://components.xamarin.com/ http://components.xamarin.com/ (there are over 300 components now). But some of them we can't immediately publish because we need to get permission from the original library author to redistribute their library. This is especially true for commercial SDKs. But if you contact us directly, we might be able to give you something. We also do custom bindings through our support team. This is something that unfortunately we haven't made very obvious. But you can just email support@xamarin.com and we can create a binding for you. Like I said, this is an area we're pretty focused on. If you have any feedback, please feel free to let me know directly: nat@xamarin.com.
- saosebastiao 12y ago
  ObjectiveSharpie is awesome! No problems so far. But when are you gonna let us use Xamarin Studio on Linux?
  - yulaow 12y ago
    I fear never. We made this question over and over on the forums or via emails but the answer is ever the same: "we have no plans to support linux". Originally the problem was about "there are too many linux distros!", then when some people suggested to at least support ubuntu as Valve did (and correctly considering the big part of used distros are ubuntu based or related) they went again on "we have no plans to support linux" without futher explainations.
  - tracker1 12y ago

by forcer 12y ago

badlogic 12y ago

I think this is the key to making a great cross-platform solution. Pretty much any mobile app that's not a toy relies on native 3rd party sdks, be it ad providers or fancy Ui compinents. Whatever platform first solves the issue of making integration of pods on iOs or AARs on Android a smooth process, will win. I don't see any options that come close to solving this. Xamarin is not native to either iOS or Android. RoboVM (the one i work on) can cheat, as we only need to solve it for iOS, Android comes for free. React Native has no clear path for accessing 3rd party libs at all yet. Whatever they can come up with will be further complicated by the fact that the JS engine is single threaded.

peterhunt 12y ago
What? http://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/nativemodulesios.html#content http://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/nativemodulesios...
- badlogic 12y ago
  I stand corrected, I must have overlooked that section. Callbacks (used to pass return values) are still experimental though, and it's unclear how this will port over to Android once that backend works.

ianlevesque 12y ago

Bindings are actually not that bad with Objective Sharpie. What SDKs are giving you trouble? I would agree that for a single platform it is not worthwhile though.

deet 12y ago

My experience with third party libraries has been quite different, for the most part. I've often been surprised at how easy it is to create bindings to libraries written in Obj-C even if no one else has before. Usually it requires extracting the compiled library from the framework, and then translating each declaration from the library's header into the C# binding definition. In many cases it's a couple of hours work (or less). That said, libraries that are provided as source files, with the instructions "just copy them into your project," can be incredibly frustrating. Our designer would love to use github.com/MengTo/Spring but I have yet to find a way to use it in Xamarin easily.

natfriedman 12y ago

Hi there, I'm the CEO of Xamarin. I'm really sorry to hear that you had issues with consuming third-party libraries. This is actually something we've been recently very focused on improving. First of all, in December we released a new tool called Objective Sharpie that can automatically bind Objective-C libraries into C#: http://forums.xamarin.com/categories/ObjectiveSharpie http://forums.xamarin.com/categories/ObjectiveSharpie If you're skilled enough to build the Objective-C library, then you'll be able to use Objective Sharpie to create a C# binding. We also have docs on doing this for Java on developer.xamarin.com. Some of our customers don't have the time or skill to do this themselves, and so we've recently created a bindings team that wraps third-party native libraries for our customers. Many of these end up published on http://components.xamarin.com/ http://components.xamarin.com/ (there are over 300 components now). But some of them we can't immediately publish because we need to get permission from the original library author to redistribute their library. This is especially true for commercial SDKs. But if you contact us directly, we might be able to give you something. We also do custom bindings through our support team. This is something that unfortunately we haven't made very obvious. But you can just email support@xamarin.com and we can create a binding for you. Like I said, this is an area we're pretty focused on. If you have any feedback, please feel free to let me know directly: nat@xamarin.com.

saosebastiao 12y ago
ObjectiveSharpie is awesome! No problems so far. But when are you gonna let us use Xamarin Studio on Linux?
- yulaow 12y ago
  I fear never. We made this question over and over on the forums or via emails but the answer is ever the same: "we have no plans to support linux". Originally the problem was about "there are too many linux distros!", then when some people suggested to at least support ubuntu as Valve did (and correctly considering the big part of used distros are ubuntu based or related) they went again on "we have no plans to support linux" without futher explainations.
- tracker1 12y ago