Microsoft Open-Sources Xamarin SDK, Adds New Developer Tools

Microsoft today announced that it has open-sourced the Xamarin SDK for iOS, Android and Mac, making good on a promise it made during Build 2016.

The source code released to the .NET Foundation under the MIT license includes native API bindings for all three platforms, command line tools and Xamarin.Forms, the company’s cross-platform UI framework.

Developers who want to contribute to these projects can get cracking right away by visiting Xamarin’s open source page.

Microsoft made the announcement at Xamarin’s Evolve 2016 developer conference, where it also revealed a number of improvements to Xamarin and Visual Studio that will support better cross-platform development.

Updates to Visual Studio will make it easier for C# developers to create native iOS apps. Developers running Visual Studio on Windows will be able to simulate and interact with their iOS apps without leaving Visual Studio, even deploying and debugging them on iOS devices plugged into their Windows machines.

Xamarin Studio 6 for Mac has a new dark theme and now uses Roslyn, Microsoft’s open source compiler, providing a more consistent environment for developers who switch back and forth between Windows and OS X. Xamarin.Forms also got a number of new features, including real-time previewing of Xamarin.Forms XAML source from within the IDE.

Petri’s Brad Sams has a great roundup of all the new features here.

Combined with the fact that Xamarin is now available free with new versions of Visual Studio, today’s announcements are really starting to make Microsoft’s acquisition of Xamarin look like a boon to developers. And it’s one more sign that the company is serious about supporting open-source communities.

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