Microsoft announced its purchase of the cross-platform development environment for mobile, Xamarin, a little over 160 days ago. Shortly after the announcement, Microsoft paraded its new purchase out for developers at its Build 2016 conference where it was met with applause and crowd excitement. The crowd at Build 2016 wasn’t only excited about the mix of Windows and other mobile development but that Microsoft was offering the tools for free.
With the glitz and glamor of the initial purchase announcement and free offerings behind them, Microsoft has been hard at work making sure its Xamarin acquisition collaborated with its already established .NET libraries. Today, Microsoft has announced that Xamarin indeed, now supports .NET Standard Libraries for all Xamarin applications.
According to a press release from the Xamarin website:
This includes creating and consuming local .NET Standard Libraries, but also adding .NET Standard Libraries from NuGet directly to your Xamarin apps. It’s now easier than ever to share code across all .NET platforms, including the recently introduced .NET Core and ASP.NET Core platforms.”
Xamarin is also announcing that it’s now possible to add NuGet to Xamarin application that support .NET Standards through either Xamarin Studio or Microsoft’s Visual Studio, enabling an almost one-stop shop for targeting and referencing netstandards folders.
However, there is a catch. To access, create, or consume .NET Standard libraries in Xamarin application, developers will need to be running Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 and Xamarin 4.1.2 for Visual Studio along the stable release channel.
Barring any glaring reason not to use the latest VS or Xamarin updates, developers should be able to start creating .NET Standard Libraries in Xamarin Studios today. An update to enable the same level of .NET Standard Libraries creations on macOS is planned but no specific dates have been revealed.
For those interested, visit either the Xamarin blogs or read the official .NET Standard Libraries documentation here. Let us know in the comments what you think about Xamarin adding support for .NET Standard Libraries.
