Missing PCL Templates in Xamarin Visual Studio 2017

Question

I want to create Xamarin.Forms PCL project but there is no PCL template in VS 2017

New Project -> Cross-Platform -> Cross-Platform App (Xamarin.Froms) -> Blank App

(There are only Shared Project and .Net Standard are available).

• Microsoft Visual Studio Enterprise 2017 Version 15.5.2
• Microsoft .NET Framework Version 4.7.02556

Answer 1

.NET Standard libraries are the replacement for Portable Class Libraries (PCL). However, a library that targets .NET Standard is still a PCL, and is referred to as a .NET Standard-based PCL. Certain PCL profiles are mapped to .NET Standard versions, and for profiles that have a mapping, the two library types will be able to reference each other. For more information, see PCL compatibility on Microsoft Docs.

.NET Standard is a formal specification of .NET APIs that are intended to be available on all .NET runtimes (such as .NET Framework, Mono, and .NET Core). In real terms, you can think of this as a simplified, yet expanded, Portable Class Library. Any code added to a .NET Standard library can be used on any runtime that supports the .NET Standard Platform. In addition, we get expanded access to APIs within the .NET base class libraries, support more platforms, and we don't ever have to deal with the madness that is PCL profiles.

The Xamarin.Forms 2.3.5-pre release added compatibility with .NET Standard. In addition to shared projects and Portable Class Libraries, you can now add .NET Standard libraries to your code sharing tool belt.

To learn more about .NET Standard for Xamarin (without Xamarin.Forms), check out our blog on .NET Standard support . If you're still curious as to what .NET Standard is all about, I suggest you check out Immo Landwerth's introductory video , read up on the documentation on docs.microsoft.com , or follow along on GitHub .