Visual Studio 2017 - Cross Platform App - No PCL

Question

I decided to give Cross Platform Apps a go. I have been searching for tutorials for hours. A lot of them look interesting but i hit a problem at the start every time. Every tutorials tells me : File -> New Project -> Visual C# -> Cross-Platform -> Cross-Platform App (Xamarin.Forms). When i do this, i have to choose some settings, including "Blank App" and the Code Sharing Strategy. And that's where it goes wrong. I should be able to choose Portable Class Library but it's not there. I can choose between "Shared Project" and ".NET Standard". Did I forget to install something or has the Code Sharing Strategy changed?

Answer 1

With Visual Studio 2017.5 they removed the option to create PCL option from the cross platform app. The standard class library is a better option than the PCL because the PCLs only allowed you to use the framework functions all the targeted platforms support. With standard libraries you have a list of functions it must support on all the platforms so you have much more available to you in the standard library than a PCL