xamarin is a platform consisting of xamarin.ios, xamarin.android, xamarin.mac, xamarin-forms, and xamarin.uitest. The platform provides tools for the entire lifecycle of an App - developing, test and DevOps. This platform allows you to write cross-platform native applications for android, ios and macos using c#, allowing you to share a lot of code between platforms.

Tag Usage

When using the xamarin, you should also include the related Xamarin platform tag your question relates to.

If you are describing a question about a crash in your app, please include a complete stack trace and, preferably, a minimal reproducible sample.

History

Xamarin was founded in May 2011 and is headquartered in San Francisco, with an engineering office in Boston, MA. Xamarin was acquired by Microsoft in February 2016.

At Microsoft's Build 2016 developer conference on March 31st, 2016, Microsoft announced a new licensing scheme; including Xamarin with all Visual Studio and Visual Studio for Mac versions, including Visual Studio Community edition. And now, Xamarin is free for anyone to use with Visual Studio, on either Mac or Windows

Xamarin created the Xamarin Platform which includes Visual Studio for Mac as well as a plug-in for Visual Studio on Windows, which can be used to develop native mobile applications for Windows, iOS, and Android platforms using the .NET framework.

The Xamarin Platform includes Xamarin.iOS, Xamarin.Android, and Xamarin.Mac (for macOS), which allows for the development of C# and .NET applications with full access to the native APIs. This allows for code sharing between platforms and the creation of applications for multiple platforms with a native user experience.

Xamarin 3 introduced xamarin.forms, a framework for creating UI from code shared between platforms.

Xamarin 4 introduced a new SSH-based build host, to replace the old and buggy build host. The build host provides the connection between Visual Studio and the Mac in order to be able to build and deploy iOS applications.

Since June 2017 the Xamarin Platform supports .net-standard libraries shifting and expanding the previous Portable Class Library (PCL). It enhances access to APIs within the .NET base class libraries and supports more platforms.

Resources

• Xamarin documentation
• Weekly Xamarin
• Microsoft Learn
• Xamarin Blog
• Planet Xamarin (community blogs)
• Xamarin Developers (YouTube channel)

Books

• Creating Mobile Apps with Xamarin.Forms
• Xamarin Mobile Application Development Cross-Platform C# and Xamarin.Forms Fundamentals
• Mastering Cross-Platform Development with Xamarin
• Mastering Xamarin.Forms
• Xamarin in Action
• Xamarin Cross-Platform Development Cookbook
• Xamarin Forms Notes For Professionals

Chat Rooms

• Xamarin Community Slack