Will Xamarin Native be supported in MAUI world

Question

Hello.

I've found official end-of-support date for Xamarin: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/support/policy/xamarin

But I've heard, tht Xamarin Native is technology behind MAUI, and it will continue to be supported after that date. It will be renamed to .NET for Android / .NET for iOS.

So, if i have an app built on Xamarin Native, and I have no time or resources to rewrite it on Forms or MAUI, will it generally work on imaginary iOS 17 and Android 14. I'm asking about support from SDK side, because now MS releases updates to SDKs when new OS versions are released.

Answer 1

if i have an app built on Xamarin Native, and I have no time or resources to rewrite it on Forms or MAUI, will it generally work on imaginary iOS 17 and Android 14.

You will need to migrate your app to .Net for iOS and .Net for Android. You do not need to rewrite it to use Forms or the Maui UI.

See the Xamarin Support Policy. Italics are mine to highlight relevant sentences for your question.

.NET MAUI and Xamarin End of Support .NET 6 takes over from Xamarin for building Android, iOS, and cross-platform applications. Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.iOS projects should be upgraded to .NET SDK-style projects. Xamarin.Forms projects should be upgraded to .NET Multi-platform App UI (MAUI). Xamarin support will end on May 1, 2024 for all Xamarin SDKs. Android 13 and Xcode 14 SDKs (iOS and iPadOS 16, macOS 13) will be the final versions Xamarin will target.

MAUI is a broad term and includes both the Maui UI classes in Microsoft.Maui and the underlying cross-platform client stack such as .Net for iOS and .Net for Android. You can find the list of Maui SDKS in the .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI) Support Policy

Answer 2

No, you don't need to convert to Maui.

There is an example at https://github.com/gmck of how to do it. See the docx file contained in https://github.com/gmck/NavigationGraph2Net