Is it possible to migrate a MonoCross application incrementally to MvvmCross?

Question

The team I'm on created a cross-platform application that runs on iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile that was created using Xamarin's tools and MonoCross. We're looking at MvvmCross as a possible MonoCross replacement but don't want to write the application from scratch.

Does anyone have experience with or thoughts on migrating a Xamarin/MonoCross cross-platform application to Xamarin/MvvmCross? Is it possible for the two frameworks to coexist in the same app (the ideal solution would have us migrate the app one screen at a time).

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Following Stuart's advice below I confirmed that it is possible to integrate MvvmCross into an existing MonoCross application.

In the original code a selection on View 1 initiates a call to Controller 2 using MonoCross URI navigation. Controller 2 displays View 2, passing it the data from Model 2.

Following the example in this video I created an MvvmCross View and ViewModel. A selection on View 1 still navigates to Controller 2 but Controller 2 now displays the new MvvmCross View 2. View 2 is data bound to ViewModel 2 which takes over Controller 2's functions of getting the Model data.

Answer 2

I don't know of anyone who's done this recently, but I originally ported several of the MonoCross samples over when I first created MvvmCross. The overall idea of one page to one "ViewModel" stays the same, although the mvvm binding offers more continuous view-viewmodel interactions than the more discrete Controller-Action model.

At a practical level:

• MvvmCross itself is very modular and can be used in "CrossLight" mode where it simply provides data-binding and plugins - see CrossLight in http://mvvmcross.wordpress.com/ . You might be able to use this for migrating pages one-by-one
• MonoCross isn't really very interface/IoC based - so you may find that your resulting MvvmCross migration would also not be interface based either
• MonoCross apps tend to use file-linking and #define s rather than PCLs - so you may find it easier to not use PCLs in MvvmCross

I suspect the best option for this migration is to let your team experiment - they already have lots of knowledge about your app and about what they do and don't need and what benefits they do and don't get from a framework.