Hello This is a question mainly for Erel
I have been following every post I have seen about the possibilities of a future cross platform IDE for the B4X Suite of tools and am aware that WPF is in play and the show stopper from the current platform running native on Mac and Linux which brings me to this. I am wondering if you have considered porting the IDE to use some of the other well known WPF like frameworks that do run on Windows, Mac and Linux including providing support for mobile and web platforms. I am aware that previously some of the tools you give us access to run on the .NET Framework in addition to the IDE.
It is well known that .NET can now run on any device and is for the most part cross platform with the exception of a clearly define GUI strategy for cross platform applications on Microsoft's part. This has led to many efforts to overcome this shortcoming by the community with some being more successful then others. As of this post there are projects like
Xamarin.Forms - Which has been know to run on linux but because it was picked up by Microsoft focused more on everything but linux and is now the bases for a new framework.
.NET MAUI - The evolution of Xamarin.Forms which appears to be a hot reload that is still not progressing to linux and has almost no added benifit over the plain Xamarin stack.
WPF itself has been ported to .NET Core but will still only run on windows due to it's dependence on direct x.
So with those 3 microsoft sponsored stacks we may still never see complete cross platform capability shipped with the core. Such a shame they don't realize the value of making .NET capable of running line of business desktop applications on every operating system by adding Linux support to any GUI frameworks they ship. Which brings me to these.
Uno - https://platform.uno/ - "Open-source UI Platform for building single-codebase applications for Windows, iOS, Android, Web-Assembly, macOS, and Linux. Developing applications with Uno Platform is very similar to developing classic Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) apps. Uno Platform uses Windows-first XAML ‘dialect’, making the learning curve minimal. The rest of the ‘plumbing’ is the same as it is in WPF – data access, authentication etc."
Avalonia - http://avaloniaui.net/ - "Considered a spiritual successor to WPF, Avalonia provides a familiar developer experience allowing you to leverage years of pre-existing knowledge and investments." This Platform is already integrated with the cross platform JetBrains Rider IDE and can already be installed and developed on Windows, Mac and Linux but also supports Blackberry, Web-Assembly, iOS and Android.
There are a few more frameworks but they are not really 100% ready for prime time in the sense they are behind in platform coverage therefore in a similar state as microsofts frameworks but instead of missing support for Linux they are lagging behind in support for mobile deployment in one way or another. One example would be ETO.Forms which android and ios libraries are incomplete or still under development.
Anyway, without really knowing what the B4X codebase looks like is it not possible that the IDE could maybe be successfully made to run cross platform with some help from either the Uno or Avalonia platforms which both provide a clear and stable path for cross platform WPF based applications. And of course .NET Core 3.1 .NET 5 and .NET 6 all provide superior native cross platform capabilities across Windows, MacOS and most Linux flavors right now and for sure is stable enough for prime time.
Again without knowing what you got boiling in the codebase it would on the surface seem that it is highly possible to get a B4X Cross platform IDE with supporting tools in the mix.
What do ya say? Am I off the mark here? All I know is I would do whatever I needed to support this effort as I am sure others would as well Having a native running B4X platform covering development on all major OS's would add tremendous value to the value you have already created. I think it would be a game changer and bring this wonderful platform you have created to the next level.
I have been following every post I have seen about the possibilities of a future cross platform IDE for the B4X Suite of tools and am aware that WPF is in play and the show stopper from the current platform running native on Mac and Linux which brings me to this. I am wondering if you have considered porting the IDE to use some of the other well known WPF like frameworks that do run on Windows, Mac and Linux including providing support for mobile and web platforms. I am aware that previously some of the tools you give us access to run on the .NET Framework in addition to the IDE.
It is well known that .NET can now run on any device and is for the most part cross platform with the exception of a clearly define GUI strategy for cross platform applications on Microsoft's part. This has led to many efforts to overcome this shortcoming by the community with some being more successful then others. As of this post there are projects like
Xamarin.Forms - Which has been know to run on linux but because it was picked up by Microsoft focused more on everything but linux and is now the bases for a new framework.
.NET MAUI - The evolution of Xamarin.Forms which appears to be a hot reload that is still not progressing to linux and has almost no added benifit over the plain Xamarin stack.
WPF itself has been ported to .NET Core but will still only run on windows due to it's dependence on direct x.
So with those 3 microsoft sponsored stacks we may still never see complete cross platform capability shipped with the core. Such a shame they don't realize the value of making .NET capable of running line of business desktop applications on every operating system by adding Linux support to any GUI frameworks they ship. Which brings me to these.
Uno - https://platform.uno/ - "Open-source UI Platform for building single-codebase applications for Windows, iOS, Android, Web-Assembly, macOS, and Linux. Developing applications with Uno Platform is very similar to developing classic Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) apps. Uno Platform uses Windows-first XAML ‘dialect’, making the learning curve minimal. The rest of the ‘plumbing’ is the same as it is in WPF – data access, authentication etc."
Avalonia - http://avaloniaui.net/ - "Considered a spiritual successor to WPF, Avalonia provides a familiar developer experience allowing you to leverage years of pre-existing knowledge and investments." This Platform is already integrated with the cross platform JetBrains Rider IDE and can already be installed and developed on Windows, Mac and Linux but also supports Blackberry, Web-Assembly, iOS and Android.
There are a few more frameworks but they are not really 100% ready for prime time in the sense they are behind in platform coverage therefore in a similar state as microsofts frameworks but instead of missing support for Linux they are lagging behind in support for mobile deployment in one way or another. One example would be ETO.Forms which android and ios libraries are incomplete or still under development.
Anyway, without really knowing what the B4X codebase looks like is it not possible that the IDE could maybe be successfully made to run cross platform with some help from either the Uno or Avalonia platforms which both provide a clear and stable path for cross platform WPF based applications. And of course .NET Core 3.1 .NET 5 and .NET 6 all provide superior native cross platform capabilities across Windows, MacOS and most Linux flavors right now and for sure is stable enough for prime time.
Again without knowing what you got boiling in the codebase it would on the surface seem that it is highly possible to get a B4X Cross platform IDE with supporting tools in the mix.
What do ya say? Am I off the mark here? All I know is I would do whatever I needed to support this effort as I am sure others would as well Having a native running B4X platform covering development on all major OS's would add tremendous value to the value you have already created. I think it would be a game changer and bring this wonderful platform you have created to the next level.
The good thing about B4x is that its accessible. If it was only a Mac IDE or Linux IDE, eish. Thing is most people in the world just use Windows. Mac uses some version of Linux... ohhh k.
