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Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) with Xamarin apps

Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2015. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

Xamarin enables you to build cross-platform mobile apps targeting Android, iOS, and Windows using C#, .NET, and Visual Studio. Xamarin allows a large portion of code to be shared between platforms, with only a small percentage needing to be platform-specific. For more information on Xamarin itself, see Visual Studio and Xamarin.

Developing apps for modern platforms involves many more activities than just writing code. These activities, referred to as DevOps (development + operations), span the app’s complete lifecycle and include planning and tracking work, designing and implementing code, managing a source code repository, running builds, managing continuous integrations and deployments, testing (including unit tests and UI tests), running various forms of diagnostics in both development and production environments, and monitoring app performance and user behaviors in real time through telemetry and analytics.

Visual Studio together with Visual Studio Team Services and Team Foundation Server provide a variety of DevOps capabilities, also referred to as Application Lifecycle Management or ALM. Many of these are wholly applicable to cross-platform projects.

This is especially true with Xamarin apps because they are built with C# and .NET, around which some ALM tools are built. Other tools, require tight integration with build and runtime environments. Because Xamarin apps run on non-Windows platforms and use the Mono implementation of .NET, Xamarin provides specialized tools for certain needs.

The tables below identifies which Visual Studio ALM features you can expect to work well with a Xamarin project, and which ones have limitations. Refer to the linked documentation for details on the features themselves.

Agile tools

Reference link: Work (using Visual Studio Team Services or TFS, including Team Explorer Everywhere)

General Comment: all planning and tracking features are independent of project type and coding languages.

Feature Supported with Xamarin Additional Comments
Manage backlogs and sprints Yes
Work tracking Yes
Team room collaboration Yes
Kanban boards Yes
Report and visualize progress Yes

Modeling

Reference link: Analyzing and Modeling Architecture

Design features are independent of coding language, or work with .NET languages like C#. See Roles of Architecture and Modeling Diagrams in Software Development for what aspects are related to code.

Feature Supported with Xamarin Additional Comments
Sequence diagrams Yes
Dependency graphs Yes
Call hierarchy Yes
Class designer Yes
Architecture explorer Yes
UML diagrams (use case, activity, class, component, sequence, and DSL) Yes
Layer diagrams Yes
Layer validation Yes

Code

Feature Supported with Xamarin Additional Comments
Use Team Foundation Version Control or Visual Studio Team Services Yes
Getting started with Git in Team Services Yes
Code analysis/Improve code quality (references, suggested changes, etc.) Yes
Find code changes and other history Yes Except across platform-specific boundaries where the implementation isn’t resolved until run time.
Use code maps to debug your applications Yes

Build

Reference link: Build

Feature Supported with Xamarin Additional Comments
On-premises TFS server Yes Build machines must have Xamarin installed and can be linked to an OSX computer to build for iOS. See Configuring TFS for Xamarin (Xamarin website)
On-premises build server linked to Visual Studio Team Services Yes See Build server for instructions.
Hosted controller service of Visual Studio Team Services Yes See Build your Xamarin app.
Build definitions with pre- and post-scripts Yes
Continuous integration including gated check-ins Yes Gated check-ins for TFVC only as Git works on a pull-request model rather than check-ins.

Testing

Reference link: Testing the application

Feature Supported with Xamarin Additional Comments
Planning tests, creating test cases and organizing test suites Yes
Manual testing Yes
Test Manager (record and playback tests) Yes Windows devices and Android emulators only from Visual Studio. Recording for all devices is possible with Xamarin Test Recorder.
Code coverage n/a
Unit Test Your Code Yes For Windows and Android targets, the built-in MSTest tools can be used. To run unit tests on Windows, Android, and iOS, Xamarin recommends NUnit. See Configuring TFS for Xamarin (Xamarin website).
Use UI Automation To Test Your Code Windows only Visual Studio's UI test recorder is Windows only. For all platforms, see Xamarin Test Recorder.

Improve code quality

Reference link: Improve Code Quality

Feature Supported with Xamarin Additional Comments
Analyzing Managed Code Quality Yes
Finding Duplicate Code by using Code Clone Detection Yes
Measuring Complexity and Maintainability of Managed Code Yes
Performance Explorer No Use the Xamarin Profiler through Xamarin Studio instead. Note that the Xamarin Profiler is currently in preview and does not yet work for Windows targets.
Analyze .NET Framework memory issues No Visual Studio tools do not have hooks into the Mono framework for profiling.

Release management

Reference link: Automate deployments with Release Management

Feature Supported with Xamarin Additional Comments
Manage release processes Yes
Deployment to servers for side-loading via scripts Yes
Upload to app store Partial Extensions are available that can automate this process for some app stores. See Extensions for Visual Studio Team Services; for example, the extension for Google Play.

Monitor with HockeyApp

Reference link: Monitor with HockeyApp

Feature Supported with Xamarin Additional Comments
Crash analytics, telemetry, and beta distribution Yes