Is there a more recent alternative to AvalonDock?

Question

I need a docking system like AvalonDock for a project, but it appears to have last been updated in June 2013. Is there something more... actively developed that I could use in its stead?

Answer 1

AvalonDock is actually pretty mature and bug free and that is probably why it has not been modified for a long time; I've been using it in a commercial project for quite a while now and it has no obvious bugs. The only thing that my team has found is an issue with its drag and drop handlers deadlocking with our own, but that is probably an issue with our code and not theirs.

I've previously used the Telerik dock (also in a commercial project) and AvalonDock is definitely better (despite the fact that Telerik is paid for and commercially supported). That shouldn't be much of a surprise as Telerik libraries are notoriously buggy and their support is pitiful.

I would be really surprised if you could find something materially better in the closed or open source worlds.

As a side note AvalonDock is part of the SharpDevelop project and a newer version of the dock can be found in their codebase: https://github.com/icsharpcode/SharpDevelop/tree/master/src/Libraries/AvalonDock/AvalonDock

I was looking at it a few weeks ago to work out how they had resolved an issue with routed commands and floating windows and it is a fair bit different from the version that they distribute as a standalone. You might want to just take that library and compile it yourself; not sure what the advantages of this version would practically be, but the last check-in was about 7 months ago.