Microsoft gobbles up Xamarin
-
FINALLY!
I was expecting this to happen from the moment Microsoft announced .NET is going cross-platform.
As a reminder, Xamarin is making a popular solution for developing native iOS and Android apps in C#. Basically, the expose API wrappers and cross-compile code into the native language. It works pretty well from the technical side, but their tooling (Xamarin Studio) is leaving a trail of angry rants over the internet.
It'll be interesting to see what MS does with this. On the surface, they can just allow you to develop iOS and Android applications using their (superior?) tooling. And then sort of sneak in an easy Windows Phone checkbox as well. But how will that reflect their Universal App platform? Will it become a target in this cross-compilation project? Or will you be making a Universal App separately, and then just sharing DLL-s with iOS/Android projects?
Microsoft is now openly challenging Apple and Google on their home turf. It won't be easy to make a compelling platform with this hodge podge of half-completed platforms and libraries.
-
Xamarin is making a popular solution for developing native iOS and Android apps in C#.
They're also making Mono (or at least have it licensed or something), which was probably a bigger incentive for Microsoft to buy them off.
-
They're also making Mono (or at least have it licensed or something), which was probably a bigger incentive for Microsoft to buy them off.
I'm pretty sure Roslyn stuff will supplant Mono, since it was made cross-platform from the ground up.
-
But how will that reflect their Universal App platform? Will it become a target in this cross-compilation project? Or will you be making a Universal App separately, and then just sharing DLL-s with iOS/Android projects?
At the moment, you can share quite a bit of code between them as it is, which they seem to recommend a lot.
