Xamarin shim assemblies and PCL

Question

I want to be able to convert some existing code which uses standard.csproj, droid.csproj and ios.csproj so that they are all based on PCL thus simplifying the solution.

I have read and looked at the shim solution suggested here:

http://slodge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/cross-platform-winrt-monodroid.html

But:

1: I am unsure how to actually use the shim assemblies - do I reference these instead of the GAC versions?

2: There is a lot of mention that iOS isn't working yet. Is this the case?

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Answer 1

The official support for PCLs from Xamarin is due in Alpha any day now - expect it before the end of June 2013.

Until then, you can see how to use PCLs by including the shim assemblies from MvvmCross - take a look at:

• the PortableSupport shims source - https://github.com/slodge/MvvmCross/tree/v3/PortableSupport
• the Nuget 2.5 PortableSupport package - https://www.nuget.org/packages/MvvmCross.PortableSupport/
• the 25 videos on http://mvvmcross.wordpress.com/ all of which use PCLs
• the accompanying source code for those videos - the .csproj files will show you how the shims are used - https://github.com/slodge/NPlus1DaysOfMvvmCross
• lots of other PCL based x-plat samples on https://github.com/slodge/MvvmCross-Tutorials/

For additional shims, watch questions like TPL on PCL for MvvmCross for PCL Profile 78 (I know people have got this working - just waiting for them to answer the question...)

When Xamarin official PCL support ships then I anticipate that they will ship official shims and we can retire the MvvmCross ones. However, no-one at Xamarin has given me any answer about this - for latest on this, maybe see status of https://bugzilla.xamarin.com/show_bug.cgi?id=8035