Porting Xamarin Windows 8 app to Windows 10 SDK

Question

I'm trying to run one of samples from this site.

The problem is: projects were made for Windows 8. When I open solution in Visual Studio, it tells me that I need to install Windows 8 SDK to proceed.

I'm using now Windows 10 SDK and I will no longer use SDK 8, so I'd rather not install this SDK and use new one intead. Can I somehow port this project to Windows 10 app?

How it looks like right now:

Answer 1

Yes, porting is possible. I would suggest creating a new project in this solution (most solutions of this git already added UWP support, as I saw) and redo most stuff. On some projects which use platform specific code, this porting might not work since some APIs changed from WP8 to UWP - as you probably know.

After this procedure I still had problems - I had no working .appxmanifest file, so I cannot create a .pfx file. This keeps warning you the certifcate file is missing.

I am not sure if all steps are necessary. I leave this as homework ;)

Anyway, here I show you steps to port the TodoREST-project to UWP:

• Unloading iOS and Droid project will make this easier
• Uninstall all nuget packages from Portable and WinPhone81 project
• Change portable class profile to Profile111 (uncheck WP8 Silverlight as target)
• Now you can reinstall Xamarin.Forms and Newtonsoft.Json on portable project (uninstall was necessary to change profile - which was necessary because it raised some errors here)
• Remove app.config from WinPhone81 project

• Add a project.json file to WinPhone81 project and put in following content:

  {
      "dependencies": {
          "Microsoft.NETCore.UniversalWindowsPlatform": "5.0.0",
          "Xamarin.Forms": "2.0.0.6482"
      },
      "frameworks": {
          "uap10.0": { }
      },
      "runtimes": {
          "win10-arm": { },
          "win10-arm-aot": { },
          "win10-x86": { },
          "win10-x86-aot": { },
          "win10-x64": { },
          "win10-x64-aot": { }
      }
  }
  

• Save everything and close WinPhone81 project

• In file explorer go to folder and edit Package.appxmanifest

  • Exchange Package Tag by following:

    <Package xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/manifest/foundation/windows10" xmlns:mp="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/2014/phone/manifest" xmlns:m3="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/manifest/uap/windows10" IgnorableNamespaces="m3 mp"> 
    

  • Remove ... and add following instead:

    <Dependencies>
        <TargetDeviceFamily Name="Windows.Universal" MinVersion="10.0.0.0" MaxVersionTested="10.0.0.0"/>
    </Dependencies>
    

• Edit TodoREST.WinPhone81.csproj:

  • In first <PropertyGroup> replace <TargetPlatformVersion> by this:

    <TargetPlatformIdentifier>UAP</TargetPlatformIdentifier>
    <TargetPlatformVersion>10.0.10586.0</TargetPlatformVersion>
    <TargetPlatformMinVersion>10.0.10586.0</TargetPlatformMinVersion>
    

  • Change ProjectTypeGuids to

    <ProjectTypeGuids>{A5A43C5B-DE2A-4C0C-9213-0A381AF9435A};{FAE04EC0-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}</ProjectTypeGuids>
    

  • On every PropertyGroup with Condition=... replace WINDOWS_PHONE_APP in DefineConstants by WINDOWS_UAP

  • Save
• Reload project in Visual Studio
• Edit MainPage.xaml and change <forms:WindowsPhonePage to <forms:WindowsPage and forms namespace to using:Xamarin.Forms.Platform.UWP (from .WinRT)
• Here I had to restart VS2015 for any reason as it did not notice the project.json
• Start project and debug!

I hope this answers your questions.